


Strider's Edge

by paraTactician



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-18
Updated: 2011-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:53:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 67,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paraTactician/pseuds/paraTactician
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'It was a Tuesday late in September when I went up to Oxford University.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. et in Arcadia ego

**Author's Note:**

> Right. Welcome to the longest and most complex fic I have attempted to date. In the unlikely event of a sudden drop in cabin pressure, oxygen masks will fall from the panels above your seats.
> 
> HEFTY DISCLAIMER: this is an AU fic with a strong emphasis on the A. This is not the world of Sburb, or even a world especially close to it. These are not your father's Homestuck characters. They have many points in common with the characters we know and love, and I'm hoping you'll get some fun and some satisfaction out of spotting what those points are; but if you really want a story about canon characters behaving in more or less canon ways - like my previous fics - then you're best off keeping on walking.
> 
> What IS this world, I hear you cry? Well, that's rather the point. It's what happened when I double-punched the Homestuck card with the captchacodes for a couple of books picked at random off my shelf and ran the result through my mental alchemiter. It's up to you to tease the flowerpot and violin of those works from the sweet jetpack that is Homestuck. One is very obvious. The second may prove harder. If you need help, ask Sollux, although he'll probably take the piss.
> 
> This fic will tackle, in no particular order, themes such as memory, justice, desire, friendship, beauty, and revenge. Also pretension. Pretension will feature in a big way.
> 
> I'm going to try and do this in twelve chapters plus a prologue. Only time will tell whether this goal is unfeasible, or actively preposterous. Either way, I really hope you find something in it to enjoy.
> 
> PCHOOOOO

_And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds._  
\- Wilfred Owen, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’

  


It was evening when C Company made its halt in the ruined village. The sun was nothing more than a dull red glow beneath the trailing crenellations of cumulus cloud on the horizon, and the men’s shadows splayed long and distorted up the cratered street behind them. I set one party to put up tents, a second to establish a perimeter – not that I thought attack was even a remote possibility, but routine is a comfort in weariness – and a third to scavenge for supplies. An old pub in the centre had survived intact but for a few holes in the roof, and this became our designated headquarters.

Once the stoves were alight and the men, too tired to talk much, were seated in groups on the village green with their tin mugs and enamelled bowls, I called over a sergeant.

“Hooper?”

“Yessir?”

“Anything from recon?”

“Not much, sir. Few farm buildings out to the East, too ruined to be of any real use – just stones, mostly. Crops are all dead, no sign of any animals. There’s one thing, though, sir – apparently there’s a big old house just over yonder rise, down in a sort of valley by itself. The boys didn’t get too close, but they reckon it’s in good shape, just some broken windows. Big place, apparently, like one of them National Trust houses. Might be defensible. Shall I tell ‘em to sweep it, sir?”

I looked at the sky, the pinks and purples of dusk already giving way on the eastern horizon to deep indigo.  


“Not now. Let them have some tuck and a rest, there’ll be plenty of time for a full sweep tomorrow. Let’s you and I just nip over and have a quick look, if it’s close enough.”

“Right y’are, sir. ‘Bout half a mile, the boys said, sir.”

They were perfectly correct; one only had to walk a little way out of the village and up a muddy track towards the setting sun to crest the rise and look down into the vale beyond. A single lane of Tarmac, unmarked grey cracked and split in places by vivid yellow weeds, began somewhere to our left and ran diagonally across and away like the secant of a rough circle until it was lost in deep woods to the north-east. For much of its course it was bounded on its far side by a crumbling red-brick wall. Halfway along this wall was a gap wider than any other, and marked out by tall stone gateposts, although the gates were long gone. Beyond this all was weeds except for a round area a little way before the main building, where stood an irregular whitish shape I could just about identify as a fountain, though already I had no need to do so. Hooper could have seen little else but the house; yet I, whose eyes were older and weaker by a good decade, saw clear as day the paths and walks and pools that lay beneath that vast tangled desolation, saw the neat flowerbeds and the trim lawns, saw row on row of blossoming gold and blue and purple still shimmer in the evening breeze.

The house itself was a minor masterpiece of English Baroque, squat and ornate and enduring, two symmetrical wings projecting either side of a great central mass crowned with a dome. It had disdained the ravages of time as beneath its notice. I suspected it always would.

At my right elbow Hooper whistled appreciatively.

“Blimey! T’ain’t 'arf big, is it, sir? Why, I reckon as we could billet a platoon in there. Build that wall back up, guns at a few of the windows, you could hold off an army for a month with enough vittles.”

I could almost feel him scanning the structure with the cold eye of the career soldier: assessing lines of fire, bottlenecks, killzones. Needing to cut off any further such analysis, I asked distantly, “Any idea what they called the place?”

“Yessir, found it on one of the old maps while we was walking up. Funny name for a house, really. Says it was called Strider’s Edge.”

I had thought the words held no more power over me; but as he spoke them I felt the sky and the forest tilt, heard voices call across the lawn, and smelt her perfume so clear and sweet it tore at my heart.

“Do you want me to see what I can find out, sir? Couple of the lads are from round these parts, they might know the name.”

“There’s no need, Hooper. I’ve been here before.”

“Oh well then, you know all about it, sir. We’d best be getting back.”

I turned to follow him back down the slope to the shattered village, the sharp tang of smoke drifting on the chilly breeze as night spilled in from the East. Strider’s Edge. Yes, I had been there before.


	2. Mercury

(play [opening theme](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B27GLAvpcxs))

 _When I would muse in boyhood  
The wild green woods among,  
And nurse resolves and fancies  
Because the world was young,  
It was not foes to conquer,  
Nor sweethearts to be kind,  
But it was friends to die for  
That I would seek and find._  
\- A. E. Housman

* * *

It was a Tuesday late in September when I went up to Oxford University. My father drove me up in our little car, the back seat and boot crammed haphazardly with suitcases and cardboard boxes and carrier bags. I barely remember the wearisome toil of dragging and carrying it all through the lodge of St Benedict’s College and into my room, which was mercifully located on the ground floor of the frontmost quadrangle. An arch in a corner of honey-coloured stone brought one to the foot of a wooden staircase worn smooth by centuries of passage, which ran straight up to a modern glass-panelled door at the top. To the left and right were solid doors of white-painted oak. A board hung just inside the archway held strips of black slate, on the topmost of which a neat hand had painted the letters J. EGBERT. A brief glance down the other slates suggested a mixture of troll and human surnames, none of them familiar.

My room lay behind the door on the left. As I was later to discover, its address, for college purposes, could be derived by taking the name of the quadrangle – Ryder, after some long-dead benefactor – adding the number carved into the keystone of the arch – 5 – and then appending the number of the room itself. The moment I took possession of my key from the Lodge, I ceased to be John Egbert, 38 Crocker Street, Plumbury, and became a new and altogether more imposing entity: Egbert, St Benedict’s, Ryder 5-1. The room, or rather rooms, proved very agreeable: a square and spacious living-room, panelled in whitewashed oak, with two large windows looking onto a tiny patch of grass tucked in some inaccessible corner of the college, and a much smaller sleeping area with room only for a bed, a sink, and a wardrobe. A fairly substantial interior door separated these.

Once all my belongings had been hauled in from the car, my father and I stood in the centre of the living-room and looked at each other. I wondered how we would approach this. Would we embrace? Shake hands? Would he simply turn and leave?

There was a moment’s pause, and then he reached out and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Son,” he said, “I am so proud of you.”

Then he was gone, and I was left in a room that was mine and mine alone, cardboard boxes on every available surface, trying not to cry.

* * *

I had barely started the unpacking when there came a smart double knock at the door. Greatly surprised, I crossed to open it, wondering if my father had forgotten to give me some last crucial piece of advice. In fact the little alcove between the door and the stairs proved to contain a large, heavily-muscled troll I had never seen before in my life. He had long stringy hair and square-framed sunglasses, and was wearing an open-necked pink polo shirt and a baggy pair of navy blue tracksuit trousers. Everything about his looks and bearing declared him to be a sportsman. He thrust out a meaty hand without smiling.

“Equius Zahhak,” he said, in a deep bass rumble. “I’m your next-door neighbour – just across in 2, you know. Thought I’d drop by and introduce myself. May I come in?”

I could hardly stop him. He flopped in one of my faded green armchairs, which creaked ominously under the weight, and made himself comfortable while I dug out my kettle from the appropriate cardboard box and set it to boiling.

“Egbert, isn’t it? Saw your name on the board. What are you reading?”

“Classics,” I told him, rooting around in a hamper full of socks for the teabags I knew my father had included. “Do you take milk?”

“No, thank you. Classics, eh? Jolly good. Not one of these bloody stupid modern creations, Media Studies or whatnot. Absolute joke. I’m an Engineer, myself.”

I expressed polite interest while excavating a teaspoon.

“That’s right. Third year Engineering. Where’d you go to school, Egbert?”

I told him. He nodded with obvious satisfaction.

“Ah, I see. You’re a solid chap then. Knew a feller from there, Butler, year above me. You know him? Arthur Butler? No? Bloody nice chap. Bit of a legend in the boat club. You joined the boat club yet?”

I wondered whether any Fresher in the long history of the college had truly joined the boat club within an hour of arrival, but I had no wish to be rude. Instead I explained, truthfully, that I was not really a sportsman, and handed him a mug. He blew on it impatiently, as though its decision to be too hot offended him personally.

“Don’t matter. You should join anyway. Boat club and the Union, that’s what Oxford’s really about. That and lectures I suppose, ha ha! No, all the sound chaps are in the boat club. You’ll be joining the Union, I suppose?”

“I... suppose so.” I wasn’t entirely sure what the Union _was_.

“Should hope so too. Bloody good value for money, if you go to a debate a week you’ll have made your money back by the start of Trinity. And of course, if you’re hoping to get anywhere in politics it’s essential.”

“Of course.”

“You planning to go into politics, Egbert?”

I wondered how long this inquisition would last. “Um, not really, no. Can I offer you a biscuit?”

“Very kind. Law, then, I suppose? Or Civil Service. They love Classicists in the Service.”

I had taken the measure of Equius Zahhak enough to suspect that a career option outside these three pillars of civilisation would not be sound. I intimated that yes, the Civil Service had struck me as a possibility.

“Ah! Sound. You’ll want to join the Union to be on the safe side, just for the contacts. I’d suggest joining the Law Society too, good cocktails, and the networking opportunities are fantastic. Stay well clear of Drama, they’re queers to a man, even the girls. Journalism, now, all very well, but my main problem is they’ve no concern for the haemospectrum...”

There followed a rambling lecture, the details of which have largely faded from my mind with the passing of the years, but which essentially divided the entire University into two categories: sound (things with which a solid chap like myself might wish to become involved) and unsound (things which, for largely unspecified moral and/or ethical reasons, a solid chap like myself should take pains to avoid). From time to time Zahhak would break off and mop his brow with a white handkerchief approximately the size of a bedsheet, which he kept in one pocket. Eventually his fount of sage advice seemed to dry up, along with his perspiration, and I was able to show him to the door. On the threshold he turned to deliver a last warning.

“Now, see here, Egbert, you seem like a damn fine chap and I’m sure you’ll do well at St Ben’s. But there’s one thing I simply must say. Whatever you do, stay clear of the odd set.”

“The odd set?” I echoed faintly.

“ _You_ know,” he said, his manner becoming almost furtive, as if afraid we might be overheard. “The freaks. Always poncing around at peculiar bloody hours of the day in weird clothes, disgracefully drunk, reading poetry and being deliberately provocative.” The sweat on his forehead threatened to break forth again. “Half of ‘em are queer. The other half are even worse. Some of ‘em are bluebloods, but they’re no better for it. They’re like a cancer, Egbert. Give ‘em a wide berth. Don’t want to catch a crab, ha ha!”

I promised that I should take stringent precautions to evade the odd set, and shut the door, feeling quite exhausted.

* * *

On the Thursday evening of Freshers’ Week there was a drinks party in college for all the first years, plus any older students who wanted to come along – the provision of free alcohol ensuring that this number would be at least statistically significant. I had made a few casual acquaintances so far, but no-one with whom I could really imagine becoming friends, so I headed along with a sense of purpose. I had barely made it through the door and taken a flute of cava from the side-table when I was accosted by a petite troll girl with huge eyes, dressed in a floppy shirt that looked like she might have borrowed it off someone several sizes larger than her. Its cuffs came as far down as the tips of her fingers. She bounded up and greeted me with a smile of pure joy.

“Helloooo! It’s so nice to meet you! My name’s Nepeta, Nepeta Leijon!”

“Oh, er, John. John Egbert.”

She giggled. “That’s a cool name! Egg-bert. Where are you from, John?”

It had never crossed my mind that my name could be construed as cool, especially not by a girl called Nepeta Leijon. We went through what I had already learned to recognise as a solemn ritual, trading hometowns, schools, and degree subjects. Nepeta was from somewhere in South London – Catford, if memory serves – and was reading Fine Art.

“Did you go to Freshers’ Fair today? Wasn’t it amazing? I joined so many clubs! Roleplaying Society, and Anime Club, and the Cult TV Society, and the Assassins’ Guild...”

I stared. I had been to Freshers’ Fair for half an hour, wandered vaguely around collecting flyers from a variety of organisations I had absolutely no desire to join, and then escaped with two free biros and a headache. None of the groups Nepeta named had featured on Equius’ Oxford binary, and I amused myself for a little while picturing what he might have to say about the relative soundness of Anime Club. I was jolted from my reverie by the awareness that Nepeta was asking me a question.

“Er, sorry. Thought I saw someone I knew. Say again?”

“What do you want to do in Oxford? Are you _mu_ sical?” She put a strange emphasis on the first syllable. “Or are you going to act? The drama scene’s meant to be _wonderful_.”

I considered. So much of my attention over the last year had been focused on reaching Oxford, I had taken little thought for what came next. I was like a man who has scaled a mountain, and stands on its summit regarding the glories of the view, while the cold realisation soaks through his clothes that there is nothing to do now but go back down.

“I... well, I want to do well in my work, of course. And...”

What _did_ I want to do? I had no musical ability other than a limited competence on the piano. I had never seen myself as an actor. As I had told Equius, I was no sportsman; even in school cricket I had usually been left in a safe fielding position somewhere on the periphery where both I and the captain hoped no ball would ever reach. I was not going to be winning Rugby Blues any time soon. I liked cinema, and computers, and that was pretty much it. Perhaps I should have followed Nepeta’s example and joined the Cult TV Society.

Suddenly, inspiration struck. I had an answer that was both true and undeniably praiseworthy.

“You know, I suppose what I really want to do is _meet_ people.”

I saw at once I had scored a hit. Nepeta beamed.

“Yes! That’s just how I feel, John! There are so many interesting people here, and I just want to meet all of them! I’m sure there’s so much I can learn!”

Her enthusiasm was like a physical force. I started to feel a little sorry for all the interesting people who were going to be met by Nepeta. Somewhere in my breast, the urge for mischief stirred. I scanned the room hastily and sighted my target, apologising profusely to a girl in a dark blue dress for a champagne flute which seemed to have ended up smashed on the floor somehow.

“Actually, Nepeta,” I said, “I met someone very interesting earlier this week. I think the two of you would get along famously.”

Her eyes glowed with happiness. I led the way.

* * *

The end of Freshers’ Week was marked by the ceremony of matriculation, by which new undergraduates became official members in full standing of the University. At Oxford this took place in an odd little circular building called the Sheldonian Theatre, and academic dress or _sub fusc_ had to be worn. For me this meant a dark suit, white shirt, white bow tie, and a ‘commoner’s gown’ – a bizarre garment like a loose black jacket with no buttons, supplied with two rather pointless streamers of black material which hung from the shoulders and down one’s back. Duly attired, I left college on Saturday morning and joined a stream of similarly-clad students from several different colleges pouring in a chattering stream down towards the Sheldonian.

We stood in a line in the paved area between the Bodleian Library and the theatre, a black-and-white troop of uncomfortable penguins, waiting to be herded inside by the roaming beadles in their bowler hats. I noticed that _sub fusc_ suited humans better than it did trolls. Against the multifarious pinks and whites and browns of the human complexion, the starched black made an agreeably severe and formal contrast. Against grey skin, it just had the effect of making the wearer look washed out and monochrome, leached of life somehow.

Nepeta saw me from her position further back in the line and gave a cheery little wave. She looked as if waiting to matriculate was simply the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. I wished I could share her straightforward glee. I was nervous, half expecting to be asked some peculiar Latin question that I would be unable to answer, and hot, and bored. My skin itched under the collar of my cheap white shirt, and I could feel the occasional bead of sweat break loose and trickle down my thigh or calf beneath the tightly-ironed polyester trousers.

“This,” said a drawling voice, “is already the most insufferably fucking tedious day of my life, and it’s barely eleven o’clock. Look here, d’you want to go and find a drink?”

I turned in surprise. The place behind me in the queue had been claimed by a young man I had never seen before. He had pale, almost translucent skin under a tumbled mop of ice-blond hair, and his eyes were concealed beneath a pair of dark spectacles with wide oval lenses, the rims of which sat on cheekbones that looked as though they had been carved from marble above an ironic mouth and a narrow, slightly pointed chin. He had taken as many liberties as he could with the dress code while still remaining inside regulations: his white bow tie (real, not clip-on, I noted) was carelessly tied, with one side full and drooping while the other was little more than a stub of fabric; a corner of his shirt was untucked; one trouser-cuff had become hitched up just far enough to reveal a slim prism of scarlet cotton at his ankle; and his buttonhole bore an extravagant red rose whose perfume I could smell even at arm’s distance.

“Why they don’t lay on refreshments at this ghastly graveside shuffle is quite beyond me,” he continued. “But I feel they can hardly complain if we take steps to rectify the omission. I think there’s a paragraph in the Geneva Conventions about how long one can legally be left standing in one place without a glass of champagne.”

“But, I say, we haven’t even matriculated yet!” I objected, trying not to think about the first sip from a cold glass of Continental lager. “Can’t they kick us out or something?”

“Good heavens, no. We’re here, we’ve been ticked off on the list, what more do they care? Everything else is a formality, and I do so hate formalities. Come on, let’s go to the pub.”

And, taking a firm hold of my arm, he led me out of the line and off at a brisk pace towards the iron gates onto Broad Street.

“Aren’t they going to stop us?” I protested feebly.

“I shall say that you’ve come over funny of a sudden and I’m taking you to lie down in the shade of a chestnut tree or cloistered arcade. If they delay us for so much as a second you will vomit absolutely _everywhere_. Step lively.”

There were no shouts, no running footsteps. I resisted the urge to glance behind us; I could clearly picture the expression of confused dismay on Nepeta’s face as it was. Another ten seconds brought us out onto the mid-morning bustle of Broad Street, just opposite Blackwell’s. A tour bus in its red livery roared past in a cloud of fumes and dust, making the silly fabric streamers on our gowns flutter out to the side. I expected we would cross the road and duck straight into the nearest pub, the White Horse, but my abductor disdained this with a wrinkle of his nose.

“Good God, absolutely not. Nobody drinks in the White Horse but American tourists and second-year History undergraduates who don’t want to stray too far from the Faculty in case they develop physical symptoms. And the King’s Arms is so _predictable_. Let’s go to the Crown.”

The Crown turned out to be a dismal watering-hole down a refuse-strewn alleyway off Cornmarket. The second we stepped through the door we drew glares of open hostility from every single one of its few patrons, most of whom seemed to be old men in flat caps and Barbour jackets. No-one in the pub but the barmaid seemed to be under fifty. I felt myself shrivel beneath my academic finery. My companion strode gaily up to the bar, swishing his gown more than seemed entirely necessary, lent an elbow on the wood and drawled, with the most preposterous overemphasis of his Eton vowels, “I say, m’dear! A gin and tonic for myself, and another for my friend, if you’d be so tremendously kind.”

The barmaid looked unimpressed. She put down the glass she was polishing and sniffed. “Doubles?”

“Is there another sort?”

“Nine fifty.”

I tried to stifle a squeak of horror. My companion extracted a black leather wallet from his back pocket, twitched forth a ten-pound note from its recesses, and handed it over as though he couldn’t be rid of it fast enough. We collected our drinks, into which I was quite sure the girl would have spat if she’d been given the opportunity, and took them to a table in the window. The boy with the blond hair flung himself down into a chair, took a long pull from his glass, and sighed appreciatively. Then he extended a hand.

“David Lalonde.”

He held out the pale hand, slim fingers slightly curled, as one might offer a taste of some exotic spirit one had discovered on holiday; the implication was that, while I was under no obligation to take it, I’d be missing out on something delightful if I didn’t. I took it – the skin was cool and dry, and I felt sticky and hot by comparison – and shook it firmly, twice.

“John Egbert.”

“Awfully glad to meet you, John. _Slainte_ , as my fat old dullard of a History teacher used to say when we brought him his pint of Guinness.”

We clinked glasses. I took my first ever sip of gin & tonic and managed not to choke. The icy cold of the liquid was very welcome, although I could have done with less flavour.

By noon on my first Saturday in Oxford, I had achieved two things of note. I had entirely failed to become an official member in full standing of the University; and I had got drunk with David Lalonde. The first of these was, as it turned out, to have absolutely no repercussions whatsoever. The second would be of much greater import in the long term.


	3. Minerva

_Sing Diamonds, Hearts and Clubs and Spades!  
Sing Hearts and Diamonds, Spades and Clubs!  
Sing Diamonds, Hearts and all,  
Hearts - and - all!_  
\- W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan, ‘The Grand Duke’

For two weeks after matriculation I heard nothing from David Lalonde. I kept the faint hope that I would bump into him on the way to lectures or in the supermarket, but as I was later to learn, the entire City of Oxford is governed by laws of probability that bear no resemblance to those of the outside world. One manifestation of this is the distribution of casual encounters. Think of someone you would like to meet while going about your daily business and you can guarantee that you will go the entire term without so much as hearing their name. The person you have no wish to see, however, will dog you at every turn, popping up with an almost comical frequency at the most unexpected junctures: at parties, on staircases, in the library, on your way to buy a coffee. I had the latter problem with Equius Zahhak, whose omnipresence in that first fortnight seemed near-supernatural, to whom I never had anything to say, and from whom I never managed to escape in anything less than ten minutes. Of David, meanwhile, there was no sign.

Gradually I fell into the swing of Oxford life. I went to lectures diligently, even McLeish on the _Aeneid_ at 9am on a Thursday, which dropped from an attendance of over a hundred in my first week to nearer twenty in my second. I also had my first tutorials. My tutor was a Fellow of the college named Dr Callum Sassacre, a sprightly human gent of perhaps fifty-five with a distinctive line in white linen suits and startlingly green shirts. His large white head was entirely bald and smooth, which was the cause of the unkindest of the three nicknames by which he was known around college, ‘Cueball’. The second sobriquet was more mysterious, and I never got to the bottom of it, although I was assured that it had been in use for almost the whole of his tenure: the older undergraduates referred to him almost exclusively as ‘Doc Scratch’. Not once did I see any behaviour or quirk that might have brought such a name to mind. I assumed it must be a reference to some event from his younger days, and that the memory of this event now only persisted in coded form, rather like the name of the city itself – which, after all, had not been used as a ford for oxen in quite some time.

He was often to be seen crossing one or other quad with his customary springing step, his bald dome gleaming in the sun. I liked him, although I was never wholly comfortable around him: he had a sense of humour that ranged from the teasing to the almost malicious, and was politely ruthless in exposing a flawed argument or shredding a badly-written essay. He would watch with a slightly callous amusement from under thin white eyebrows as unfortunate students tied themselves in rhetorical knots or stammered their way through hopelessly naive analyses they already regretted. He was terrifyingly well-read, and had a particularly unsettling technique he liked to use: while his latest victim earnestly explained their half-baked views on the text or their cherished notions about literature, he would prowl silently around his book-lined study, looking anywhere but the chair in which the student sat. Then, as the student – unnerved by the lack of any obvious response – finally tailed off into awkward silence, Scratch would extend a hand, pluck a book from a shelf seemingly at random, open it, and hand it over. The open page would always contain a line or paragraph that set off a landmine beneath the tottering tower of argument which had just been constructed. It was uncanny. His memory must have been prodigious. So many students had fallen humiliatingly before the devastating precision of this assault that it was hard not to see the justice in his third and final nickname, which must originally have been suggested by simple wordplay: Dr Massacre.

I think Doc Scratch must have seen me as a terrible fool, at least in those early days, but he was always patient with me, except for the occasional _bon mot_ which cut a little closer than I might have liked. He was more interested in my tute partner. Terezi Pyrope was a troll girl of slight build, short hair framing a sharp, intelligent face. She was not what one might call classically beautiful – instead of curves she had angles, huddled upon each other in a way that seemed to defy geometry, and when she smiled (which she did altogether too often) she showed off a disquieting number of teeth. But she was intensely striking, and I found it hard to keep my eyes off her for long. She had the perfect Oxford combination of natural brilliance allied to a formidable work ethic: she could nearly always be found in the college library right up until the closing bell, but in tutes showed none of the dutiful labourer’s reluctance to stray from familiar ground, and she was as relentless as a bloodhound in her pursuit of empty rhetoric and cant. She wanted to work as a lawyer, but was reading Classics because she said there was no point learning anything about the present until you’d learnt all you could about the past. Placed next to hers my essays looked like the miserable scrawlings of a thirteen-year-old, but I bore her no ill will for this fact; she was simply a better scholar than I, and there was no shame in admitting it.

The truly extraordinary thing about Terezi, however, was her disability. She was entirely blind, and went everywhere with a red and white cane sweeping and tapping at the ground ahead of her. She concealed her eyes behind spectacles made of an unusual red-tinted glass. Then as now, disabled trolls were an exceptional rarity: there was only one other in the whole University that I knew of, a Fresher at St Mark’s called Nitram, who could often be seen travelling to and from the Science Site in his motorised wheel-chair. Far from playing down her blindness, Terezi used it as a weapon; she took wicked satisfaction in derailing conversations whenever someone made a remark which could possibly be interpreted as insensitive to her plight, such as ‘Don’t you see?’ or ‘Now look here’. The uncomfortable silence that ensued would always be broken in short order by her cackle of joy. She owed her life, she said, to the fact that she had been born with perfect sight, and had only become blind following a childhood accident - the details of which she never revealed, at least not to me. Had she been blind from birth, she would almost certainly have fallen victim to the notoriously harsh policies of the Ministry of Eugenics.

I will always remember the strangest tutorial I ever had with Doc Scratch and Terezi. It happened in my third term, but I include it here simply to give some impression of why the hours I spent in that strange dust-haunted study at the top of a forgotten staircase often left such a deep impression on me, and why my tutor fascinated me so. The topic was the Greek poet Theocritus, and I had written and read out an essay which did little more than rehash the standard one-line assessment of his works: that Theocritus was the inventor of bucolic or pastoral poetry, and that it was in this creation of a new genre that his genius lay. Scratch listened patiently until my recital was done. I waited for him to pounce on some factual error or slip of dating, but instead he settled a little further into his chair and looked at me thoughtfully.

“Was Theocritus engaged in something new, then, John?”

I was puzzled. “Well, yes. He invented bucolic. No-one had done it before. After him Vergil wrote the _Eclogues_ , and then it all took off from there.”

“Did any Greek poets before Theocritus write about the countryside? About farming and shepherding and whatnot?”

“...yes. Hesiod did, I suppose. But that’s a bit different.”

I was uncomfortably conscious of Terezi, hunched in her chair, avid, waiting to strike.

“How is it different?”

“Well, Hesiod was writing didactic poetry – giving advice to his audience on how to farm or plough or breed goats or whatever. He wasn’t idealising nature, he was actually trying to provide practical help for people who lived in the country.”

He tipped his head back slightly and began to recite, displaying once more the frightening extent of his memory. I was grateful he’d opted for the English over the Greek.  
“ _’At the time when the goldthistle blooms, and the chirping cicada  
Sits in the tree and pours forth its clear song unceasing  
From beneath its wings, in the weary summer’s season,  
At that time goats are at their fattest, wine at its best,  
And women at their most lustful – but men are at their weakest,  
Since Sirius scorches their heads and knees,  
And their skin is dry from the heat. So at this time  
Let there be a rock’s shade, and wine from Biblos...’_  
Deeply practical advice, I’m sure any farmer would agree. No rose-tinted spectacles there.”

Terezi laughed. I began to feel the familiar flush of stupidity creeping up my neck and face.

“Do you know the first description of a countryside scene in Greek poetry?” the colourless voice continued inescapably. I didn’t.

“ _Iliad_ 18,” said Terezi, taking her cue as ever from my silence. “The decoration on the shield of Achilles.”

“Exactly. The oldest Greek poem of them all. In which we see, among other things, young men and women singing and dancing in a vineyard while a youth with a lyre plays charming songs. Should we conclude from this that the average farmstead in Homer’s time would have employed teams of lissome professional frolickers?”

“No,” I said, in a desperate attempt to rally, “because Homer wasn’t writing about his own time, he was writing about Achilles’ time, when everything was better and brighter and nobler – ”

“More ideal, in fact.”

I knew when I was beaten, and said nothing.

“Do not allow the ancients’ obsession with establishing beginnings, points of origin, founders and discoverers, to blind you to the reality,” Scratch said mildly. “There is little or nothing, in art as in life, that is truly new. Nothing really begins, just as nothing really ends. Every scene we read has been written before, at a different time, with different characters. Configuration is all.”

“So we shouldn’t bother with modern literature, because it’s just ancient literature done over again?”

“Not at all. How many people through history have said ‘I love you’, John? It’s hardly a masterstroke of dialogue. Each time we say it, it’s in quote-marks, whether or not we wish to see them. And yet I’ll warrant that if and when you say it to a young lady – or a young man – you’ll mean it quite as much as it has ever been meant, and the recipient would be most unwise to dismiss it on the grounds that it’s not original material.”

“But you can’t say _nothing really begins_ ,” Terezi said suddenly. “Things begin all the time. There wouldn’t _be_ anything if nothing began.”

“When did you begin, Terezi?” asked Scratch.

There was a silence.

“The genetic material which created you came from dozens if not hundreds of other trolls. All the parts of Terezi Pyrope, all the code that makes up her message, existed long before she did. And yet you _are_.”

“Then I began when they came together to make me,” she said.

“But that’s not a beginning. That’s a coming together. That’s a configuration.”

Even Terezi seemed momentarily off-balance.

“Allusion, imitation, intertext, mimicry, quotation. Everything that can happen is either a visual or substantive reproduction of something which has already transpired. Life is a game of cards. All of the cards have been there from the start, and they cannot be damaged or destroyed by anything we do. The only power we possess is that of choosing the order in which we play them.”

I wasn’t entirely sure who Scratch was talking to any more. I shot a glance sideways at Terezi, but she was rapt and attentive.

“In just the same way, Theocritus leafs through the photograph album of Greek literature, picks out his favourite snaps, and shuffles them into a new order. The configuration he chooses then becomes an image of its own, which future authors can deploy. But that image contains nothing new. It is only the sum of the images that came before.”

I left the tutorial with my head spinning. To this day I cannot decide whether or not I think he was wrong.

* * *

On Friday of Second Week I found a cream envelope in my pigeon-hole, addressed in flowing red script to _j. egbert, esq., st benedicts college_. Such a ludicrous form of address could hardly fail to arouse my suspicions. Hardly daring to hope, I tore it open in haste, and removed a folded sheet of letter-paper.

st aloysius college  
october the something

dear john

i am giving a small party in my rooms tomorrow evening from 8pm. you would do me inestimable honour were you to attend. please make sure to bring the following:

item. a bottle of decent french red wine. something fruity but not too heavy. a clos saint-denis might fit the bill nicely if you can lay hands on one. ask your steward; the cellars of st benedicts are spoken of in song and story.

item. a dish of quails eggs. if you dont know where to acquire quails eggs by this stage in your first term then i despair of you entirely.

item. a poem. not one of your own. i have no wish to start something as insufferably jejune as a poetry club. go and find a book and pick out one you like. dont photocopy it! write it out longhand. the act of writing changes a poem and i must have originality at any cost.

no excuses will be tolerated. i look forward to seeing you.

yours in brotherhood  
d

The wine proved the easiest of the three. I went straight to the College Steward and repeated David’s instructions word for word. He chewed it over for a while and finally dug out a dusty bottle of something called Grands Échezeaux. It was expensive, but I had spent very little money in my first fortnight and my finances were in rude health. Quail’s eggs took longer; I had, of course, absolutely no idea where such things might be found, but after some cautious enquiries I managed to track them to the shelves of a small delicatessen deep in the winding _souk_ Oxford calls the Covered Market. Perversely, the greatest difficulty was presented by the poem. I had read some poetry at school, but it was all very straightforward martial Victorian stuff about military heroes and keeping one’s head and playing the game. The germ of a suspicion told me that David’s contempt for such robust and unreflective masculinity would be as the vengeance of the Lord on the first-born of Egypt. After a slightly panicked afternoon among the English Literature shelves, I turned up a poem by A. E. Housman which struck me as both aesthetically pleasing and ethically unobjectionable, and copied it out in my best handwriting onto a sheet of foolscap.

At six p.m. on Saturday I ate a light supper in the College Bar. At six forty I went in the shower, and at seven I dressed myself in my only good suit – a single-breasted affair in dark blue-green twill which my father had bought for me as a going-away present. At three minutes past eight I was standing outside an imposing oak portal halfway up Staircase 4 of Vane Quad in St Aloysius’ College, listening to the muffled burble of voices and steeling my courage to knock.

The door was answered by a tall and astonishingly beautiful troll girl in a floor-length green dress of some sheer fabric.

“Oh, um, hello,” I managed, taken somewhat aback. “I – is this Vane four-thirteen?”

She favoured me with a smile and a tilt of the head. “You must be John. I’m Kanaya. Come on in, everybody’s here.”

She turned and I followed her inside.


	4. Bacchus

_oh the alcoholic afternoons  
when we sat in your room  
they meant more to me than any, than any living thing on Earth_  
\- The Smiths, ‘These Things Take Time’

David Lalonde’s rooms were, at least by the standards of my own, palatial. I knew St Aloysius was a famously rich college, but accommodating first-year undergraduates in such splendour seemed generous indeed. In time I would come to know those rooms better than almost any place on Earth, but on this first entrance I was dazzled by the high plastered ceiling, the plush crimson carpet – far from the standard-issue scrubby matting found in most college accommodation – and the mahogany furniture, including a sideboard and a small dining-table, which even to my untrained eyes bore the patina of the truly antique. Over by one of the great bay windows that looked out into quad there was a piano. A door in the far wall presumably led through into a bedroom, since there was no sign in this spacious chamber of bed, dressing-table, or any such pedestrian necessities.

There were four people in the room besides me and Kanaya, but I only had eyes for David. He was sprawled with superb arrogance in a high-backed armchair, wearing a dinner jacket, matching trousers, and a dress shirt with tightly frilled front panels and shining black buttons. The shirt’s high wing collar was open to halfway down his pale chest, and a black bow tie dangled unstrung. He was still wearing the dark glasses. One leg was hooked up over the arm of the chair, and he held a long-stemmed glass half full of red wine as though he couldn’t quite be bothered to put it down. He looked like an after-dinner Apollo, a young god taking his ease.

“John,” he said lazily, with what was at least a passable imitation of genuine pleasure. “ _So_ good to see you again, dear boy. Come over here, let me look at you. What’s this you’ve brought?”

I presented my gifts, feeling like Caspar come to adore the infant Christ. He passed over the quail’s eggs with a nod. He spent longer on the wine, turning it over to glance at the label – “A good year, too, you _have_ done well” – before finally running an eye down the poem. “John, your handwriting is sickeningly neat, anyone would think you were a woman. No true genius has ever had neat handwriting. You must roughen it immediately. Housman, eh? Jesus, you don’t look the type.” And with that enigmatic remark he handed the paper back to me and the wine and eggs to Kanaya, who moved to put them on the sideboard with an array of other bottles and dishes, before returning and presenting me with a glass of champagne.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“Come on, Dave. Aren’t you going to make the introductions?” she asked coolly. The boy in the chair snorted.

“Oh, God, must I? What a frightful bore. Alright. John, this is Kanaya Maryam, Eng Lit, stupid fucking subject but it’s not her fault, she’s the mother I never had. To the left – ”

I turned slightly to look at the adjacent sofa. Another stunning troll girl was draped in a posture almost as louche as David’s. She seemed to my eyes to couple Kanaya’s elegance with the knife-like alertness of Terezi Pyrope. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder blue dress artfully designed to look ragged and torn around the sloping hemline, and eyed me with an undisguised and mischievous curiosity.

“ – Vriska Serket, Pure Maths, _huge_ bitch, don’t get too close, she bites. Next – ”

A young male troll, unremarkably clad in black shirt and grey slacks, with a wild mop of black hair and bags under his yellow eyes. He was slumped in his chair looking sullen.

“ – Karkat Vantas, PPE, arsehole, not a single redeeming quality – ”

“ – fuck _off_ , Lalonde – ”

“ – don’t know why he’s here, to be perfectly honest. And finally – ”

I completed my turn and managed not to gasp out loud. The troll in the last chair was dressed in black tie, like David, but his was immaculate – collar closed, bow tie neatly in place, posture upright and formal. He had accessorised with a narrow scarf of purple silk, which was wound casually once around his shoulders and flung back out of sight. All of this seemed very secondary to the delicate gill-flaps fringing his jawline, which bespoke a caste status far higher than anything I had expected to encounter. I knew there were seadwellers at Oxford, but I hadn’t for a moment expected to find myself in the same room as one. I was gripped with a foolish urge to bow.

“ – Eridan Ampora, History – Lord Dualscar’s heir, you know - practically royalty, living proof that bloodstock is no guarantee of class.”

Ampora pulled a face as if someone had waved rotting fish under his nose.  
“Oh, _wwonderful_. Another pinkskin. Lalonde, you really havve no standards wwhatsoevver, do you?” His lips were slightly flabby and quivered when he spoke, giving his otherwise cut-glass accent a strange wavering quality.

David ignored him. “Everyone, this is John Egbert. Reads Classics at St Ben’s. We’ve known each other for simply _ages_. Be nice.”

Vriska Serket patted the sofa-cushion next to her. “Come and sit by me, John dear. Auntie Serket will keep you safe.”

The grumpy-looking boy, Vantas, gave a crow of humourless laughter. I went and sat down. Vriska’s perfume was something exotic and floral that twitched my nostrils, and she eyed me in a way that made me slightly uncomfortable. I took a slug of champagne to hide my unease. She reached over like a magician with a deck of cards and held out a flat packet of cigarettes – an imported American brand I recognised, Lucky Breaks. There were eight left in the pack.

“Smoke?”

“Um, no, thanks. I don’t.”

“John,” she said, in the tone of a mother talking to a slow child. “ _John_. Anybody _worth_ anything smokes. _Winners_ smoke. Don’t you want to be a winner, John?”

I risked a glance round the room. Ampora had a cigarette wedged between two fingers of a trailing hand; Kanaya was tapping one into a glass ashtray on top of the piano. Another ashtray on the end-table next to David’s armchair held two crushed ends. Only Vantas showed no signs of partaking. I wondered if that meant he wasn’t a winner.

“Well, okay, I guess.”

She smiled, slow and vulpine, and tapped the top of the box with a glossy blue fingernail. Two cigarettes slid a little way out. Taking the cue after only a fraction of second’s hesitation, I took them both and put them to my lips. She unfolded sinuously and held the flame of a silver lighter against the tips until they caught, then plucked one neatly from my mouth and put it to her own, her eyes never leaving mine. She took a long drag, formed her lips into a perfect O, and blew out a neat plume of smoke. I watched hypnotised. I could scarcely have been more fascinated if she’d started unbuttoning her dress.

“Knock it off, Vriska,” said David roughly. “Come on, John, tell us all about St Ben’s. Is it true your Dean of Divinity got caught sodomising the Choral Scholar in the antechapel last Hilary? How perfectly sordid.”

* * *

For the next hour I played little part in the conversation. Most of the talking was done by Vriska, Eridan, and Karkat, who sparred like three gladiators in a pit, deploying a toxic mixture of needle-sharp ridicule (Vriska), crushing contempt (Eridan), and language worse than anything I’d heard even in the Sixth Form (Karkat). David – although I was learning that no-one called him David, only Dave or Lalonde – watched like the Emperor in his box, leaning on one elbow, intervening every so often to decide a doubtful combat with a devastating _pollice verso_ putdown. Kanaya stayed mostly silent. I winced every time a particularly vicious barb went home, but although they were all being quite appallingly rude to each other, everyone seemed to treat it as part of the game: no more personal than cuts or bruises in a rugby match.

Kanaya I liked; she was calm and solicitous, even stepping in at one point when Vriska tried to make me drink a glass of neat vodka without any tonic. Vriska I liked too, despite my better instincts. She was dazzlingly witty, entirely merciless, and had an effortless self-confidence I found intoxicating. Karkat was obviously trying so hard not to appear likeable that one ended up liking him anyway, in the way that a man who attempts to seem inconspicuous always stands out more as a result. His grumpiness was so heavy-handed and stagey that it just came out as rather sweet. About Eridan alone did I have my doubts. He was an unprepossessing mixture of arrogance and insecurity, rabidly defensive, and obviously racist – several of his remarks left no doubt that he shared the old-fashioned scorn of the higher troll castes for anyone lower on the haemospectrum, and for humans most of all.

My memories of the latter half of the evening, by which point I had drunk more than ever before in my life, are blurry and indistinct. I recall Eridan wandering out onto the balcony to yell fragments of Philip Larkin at some puzzled Freshers in the quad below. I recall Kanaya playing the piano, and Dave’s reaction – “fucking stop it at once, Kanaya, you know I won’t have Gilbert and Sullivan in this room unless it’s _Yeomen of the Guard_ ”; and his ensuing rendition, in a quavering but rather lovely tenor, of [‘Is life a boon?’](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIQDPJIUvhY) from that very opera. I recall Vriska lying with her head pillowed in my lap trying to explain eigenvectors, and gesticulating so violently with her tumbler of gin that half of it slopped onto the floor. I recall actually having quite a pleasant and friendly conversation with Karkat, although the subject matter is lost to me entirely. I think at one point we all climbed out onto the roof with the last bottle of champagne and another pack of Lucky Breaks and tried to spot constellations.

The next thing I remember is waking up on my bed, face-down and wearing only my boxer shorts, feeling as if some malevolent imp was sitting between my shoulderblades hauling on a length of wire that had been looped around my skull and pulled taut. My lips were stuck together, and my tongue seemed to have shrivelled up like ham left out on a plate overnight. The clock on my dressing-table said 11:16am. There was a furious pounding noise coming from somewhere, and after ten seconds of careful thought I realised the source was not the inside of my own head, but the exterior door.

I staggered out, fighting back a lurch of nausea, and opened it. Vriska was standing there in a little blue summer frock, looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She ran her gaze up and down me once and grinned.

“Excellent look, John! Much better than what you were working last night. Come on, you’re taking me out for breakfast.” She rolled the _b_ of _breakfast_ round her mouth and spat it out like a gobstopper.

“Bluh,” I replied, wittily.

After a certain amount of ticklish negotiation (“Oh John, don’t be so _boring!_ ”) I persuaded her to wait in my sitting room while I got dressed. I also took the opportunity to brush my teeth and drink about a gallon of water in a largely vain attempt to irrigate the blasted crater that had once been my mouth. We crossed the road to the St Giles Cafe and claimed a table in the window. I managed tolerable progress through fried eggs on toast and a pot of strong builder’s tea, while she launched a personal blitzkrieg on a full English with all the trimmings – bacon, sausage, eggs, tomatoes, fried bread, mushrooms, brown sauce – and strong black coffee. Gradually life returned, to the point where I was having to remind myself periodically not to stare down her cleavage. Then we went shopping.

“Your suit last night was a _monstrosity_ , John.” She had told me as much, I remembered, several times, with increasing detail and emphasis. I flashed suddenly on a memory of her tackling me onto the sofa and trying to drag my trousers off by main force until restrained by Kanaya and Dave. “It was _barbaric_.” More lovingly-savoured _b_ s. “You looked like an estate agent. We’re going to go and buy you a nice new wardrobe. A _winner_ ’s wardrobe. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

It didn’t, but as things turned out, it was. I had been shopping with my sister once or twice and hated it; she simply drifted around more or less at random, cooing over things on racks, occasionally holding them up against herself and demanding input, while never actually making any move to buy anything. I’d seen her spend two hours in a department store and come out empty-handed, without apparently realising that this result made the morning an utter failure from any rational perspective. Vriska’s shopping technique was what psychologists would call goal-oriented, a pleasing marriage of masculine practicality with feminine style and good taste. She hurtled into shops like an Exocet missile, found the type of thing she was looking for, filleted the appropriate rack with swift precision, flung a couple of items into my outstretched arms, and then dragged me off to the changing rooms. I was permitted no say in the process whatsoever; on the couple of occasions I voiced a timid opinion she listened patiently and then ignored everything I’d said. She favoured tight, boot-cut trousers, loose long-sleeved shirts, and waistcoats - a combination which gave me a faintly piratical air she said suited me perfectly. I had to admit that the young man in the full-length mirror looked everything I was not: slightly dashing, slightly roguish, ready for adventure. My favourite purchase was a black waistcoat patterned with diamonds in some dark and subtly reflective blue fabric, which I thought impossibly handsome. I still have it to this day, although I would never dare wear it now. By four o’clock in the afternoon I was laden with shopping bags and had spent more money than I had in my entire university career so far. Then she made me take her for tea and cake at Brown’s. As I staggered back to my room alone I reflected that the newfound lightness of my wallet almost served to counterbalance the weight of the bags.

The remainder of that first, unusually sunny Michaelmas – even well into November the sun continued to shine weakly down on Oxford’s cobbles, although a bitter wind sweeping in from the east made coats and jumpers a necessity – passed in a pleasant blur of expensive food, excessive drink, and Vriska. Her appearances in my life were frequent, irregularly-spaced, and explosive: I would go three or four days without hearing a word from her, and then she would turn up unannounced at some bizarre hour of the day or night to haul me away from whatever I was doing. This actually forced me into greater academic diligence than I might otherwise have shown: I learnt to tackle essays as soon as they were set, because there was never any guarantee that Vriska would not choose to kick in my door twelve hours before the deadline and enlist me on some ridiculous adventure. There was a party almost every weekend – usually at Dave’s, once or twice at Eridan’s (a similarly luxurious suite tucked away in a back quad of St Aloysius’), and once even at mine. The morning after that particular occasion I awoke fully clothed and blinking in my armchair to find the carpet strewn with empty wine bottles like soldiers fallen in war, the first five stanzas of an erotic poem we’d tried to compose in crayon on the back of a flyer for the Geography Society, a pair of black patent-leather shoes I had never seen before in my life hanging by their laces from the lightshade, Karkat unconscious under my desk, and Vriska slumbering happily in my bed (and, as it happened, in my pyjamas).

Amidst these revelries I also spent some quieter evenings in the college bar, sometimes with Nepeta and her crowd (a gang of troll girls as small and giggly as she), more often with Terezi and her best friend. Sollux Captor was a first-year Computer Scientist, a quietly-spoken and guarded young troll with a slight lisp, whose one ostentation was a distinctive pair of sunglasses he always wore – the left lens was made of red glass and the right lens of blue. I once asked him if this was to correct a sight deficiency or produce some optical effect, and he admitted that he just liked the way it looked. Several times I found myself musing on why so many of my friends seemed to feel a compulsion to keep their eyes hidden at all times. Sollux was as gifted in his field as Terezi was in hers, and they shared the instinctive, magnetic bond of the truly brilliant: the college’s computer technicians used to go to him for help, rather than the other way round, and there was a popular rumour that the University itself had approached him for advice on reinforcing its cyber-security protocols. I liked him a lot. He reminded me in some ways of Dave, although he used silence and introversion as a defence where Dave used extravagance and mercurial unpredictability. Halfway through term he started going out with an Arch & Anth student called Aradia Megido, an odd girl with wide eyes and a dreamy, diffident manner, prone to long wandering sentences that tailed off without ever reaching a conclusion. I could scarcely imagine how two such different trolls had ever found each other – in conversation, Sollux stared down at the table and Aradia stared at some evidently fascinating point in space just behind one’s left ear – but they seemed to understand each other on some deep and unspoken level, and I had to admit they made a very sweet couple.

Best of all, however, were the times I spent with Dave. I would sit working at my laptop in the library or in my room, E-mail client banished but visible in the corner of the screen, waiting for the (1) to appear. Often it would be some piece of business, a lecture cancellation or a dull circular. But sometimes the text would shine out scarlet, and my heart would leap in my chest.

john im bored, for fucks sake come and entertain me

john this place you call ‘the library’ is one long agony, how do you stand it. i told the crone at the desk white wine wasnt a drink but she still made me leave both bottles in the foyer. save me.

john i need a new suit or three and i cant go shopping with anyone but you. vriska will try to make me look like a paedophile clown as per usual. come and tell me your sweet candy lies.

john im stuck on the chapel roof again, bring help and/or vodka

john i just saw a vicar fall off his bicycle into a dustbin  
it was the closest thing i have ever had to a spiritual experience

When I was with him nothing seemed to matter very much. If asked what we actually did with those November nights and days, I would have to admit that I do not know; we sat, or walked, or sprawled on the floor, and drank ridiculous drinks that neither of us liked, and had meaningless conversations that left us both doubled up with laughter. One evening we sat down with a tall green bottle of imported melon liqueur and tried to watch an entire game of basketball on his television. Twenty minutes in, his deadpan, monotone commentary had reduced me to such helpless paroxysms that I choked on my drink, and he insisted the only way to cure my coughing fit was for me to lie flat on my back while he poured water into my mouth from a Wedgwood teapot and recited the Hail Mary in Latin ‘to drive out the evil’. On another occasion we decided to break into the gardens of St Aloysius after dark to see a comet pass over, and ended up hiding in an enormous wisteria, teeth chattering, while a suspicious porter prowled in circles round us with a torch. When we finally made it back to his room we were forced to sit together on the sofa wrapped in a duvet, drinking Irish coffee and watching a brightly-coloured and incomprehensible children’s cartoon about frogs.

I went to see him on the last day of term, before the Christmas vacation began. He was dressed in a fluffy red dressing-gown and the shades I had still never seen him take off, lounging in the window-seat reading the previous day’s _Times_.

“I’m off home tomorrow.”

He fixed me with an expressionless stare. “I discard you utterly.”

“I have to go. It’s just my father at home, my sister’s off on a ski trip, and I can’t leave him alone over Christmas.”

“So you’ll leave your friend to pine in desolation instead. I see. Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend.”

“More hideous when thou show’st thee in a _child_ ,” I said pointedly.

“Oh fuck off. Alright. Have a good break, I suppose. Well, don’t die. A little light suffering would probably do you good. I shall miss you terribly, you know.”

“You can always come and stay with me over the vac. I’m sure my father would love to meet you.”

“No, he wouldn’t, you ass. I’d drink too much and be unforgivably rude to him, and if he’s anything like you he’d be too nice to throw me out, and the whole situation would become absolutely intolerable and we’d all be forced to hang ourselves or play Scrabble. Either fate is one I should prefer to avoid.”

“Well, I could come and stay with you! You’re always going on about how your house is so big you don’t know what to do with it.”

“Out of the question,” he replied abruptly, looking back down at his paper.

“Ah! So when the chips are on the table, you’re too ashamed to introduce me to your family. You think I won’t know which fork to use for the salad.”

“John,” he said irritably, “first of all, it’s when the chips are _down_ , or the _cards_ are on the table. It’s a casino, not a fucking Little Chef. Secondly, you use the _salad_ fork for the salad, you unbelievable moron, the clue’s in the name. And thirdly, my family would love you with a deep and instantaneous passion. That’s the problem.”

I was intrigued. “How d’you mean?”

He turned to look at me again. “You’re my friend. I don’t want to share you.”

“Now who’s being an idiot? You already share me with Vriska, with Kanaya, with – ”

“This is different,” he interrupted, and his tone suggested the discussion was very much over. “You’re not ready to meet my family.”

“Alright, alright,” I said soothingly. “Well, I shall write to you, if you let me have the address. I promise I shan’t turn up unannounced in the middle of the night.”

He chewed it over for a second, then uncapped a pen and scrawled something on the top edge of his newspaper. He tore off the strip in one quick movement and held it out. I took it and peered at the barely-legible writing.

 _david lalonde  
strider’s edge  
wiltshire_

“Strider’s Edge?” I said, incredulous. “What on Earth kind of a name is that for a house? And why’s there no postcode?”

He laughed bitterly. “It’s a fucking stupid name for a house, is what it is. And you won’t need a postcode.”

* * *

I wrote to him three times that vacation, but he sent nothing back.


	5. Diana

_at Triviae lenis species et multus in ore  
frater erat, Phoebique genas et lumina Phoebi  
esse putes, solusque dabat discrimina sexus._  
(But Diana’s countenance was gentle, and there was much of her brother  
in her looks; you would think they were Phoebus’ cheeks  
and Phoebus’ eyes, and only her sex marked the difference.)  
\- Claudian, _de raptu Proserpinae,_ 2.27-9

I went back to Oxford for my second term in a state of some anxiety. Had I offended Dave with my clumsy attempts to find out more about his family? It seemed unlikely. One of the things I loved about him was that he lacked any real concept of offence. He could be angered – although even then it was a somewhat distracted anger, the peevish crossness of a thwarted child rather than the suppressed and guilty fury of the adult or the volcanic, undirected rage of adolescence – but I had never seen him hold a grudge, and I could not conceive of him doing so. To ‘cut out’ a friend for some slight, real or imagined, might have been in Vriska’s emotional repertoire, was almost certainly in Eridan’s, but had, I felt, no place in Dave’s. And yet the lack of contact remained surprising. Had he been unwell? Was there trouble at home? Would he even be in Oxford when I returned?

I had little time to spare for worry, however, confronted as I was with the exams known as ‘Collections’, which mark the beginning of every term for an Oxford undergraduate. The purpose of Collections is to ensure that one has achieved full understanding of the previous term’s work, and has spent time over the vac on revising and consolidating it. Mercifully, with my sister in Switzerland there had been very little to distract me at home, so I had put some real effort into filling the gaps and patching the holes that the excitements of Michaelmas had left in my work. I scored highly in both my papers, and Doc Scratch commended me in our first tutorial for the essay I wrote on Achilles and Patroclus in the _Iliad_ , which he said showed ‘an impressively sensitive and mature understanding of the topic for a first-year student’. Terezi turned to flash me a quick grin. She always liked it when I did well; secure in her position as the incisive Holmes to my bumbling Watson, she could afford to encourage my brief flashes of wit.

The evening after Collections I sent Dave a quick E-mail to hope that his had passed without upset, and to suggest that we went for a drink in the Madding Crowd. There was no reply. I went to the bar with Terezi, Sollux, and Aradia instead, and listened to Sollux grumble about how the idiot who’d set his exam had clearly lacked even the most rudimentary understanding of basic code, and how he’d been forced to rewrite every single question before he could bring himself to answer one. Aradia patted his hand soothingly. I fancied I could almost hear the howls of anguish floating from the Senior Common Room.

A fortnight passed and no Dave. I tried everything: E-mail, notes to his pigeonhole, turning up at his room. When I saw Vriska I asked if she’d heard from him; she said no, and seemed surprised that I expected to. “He’s a busy guy, John!” she told me, peeling a slice of cream from the edge of her blueberry cheesecake with a long fingernail and idly sucking it clean. “He has an awful lot of irons in the fire, you know. Not as many as me, of course. But a lot.” I even E-mailed Karkat, an approach which won me five lines of spectacular foul-mouthed invective about wasting his time followed by the comment ‘NAH, HAVEN’T SEEN HIM, SORRY MAN’.

On the Thursday morning I finally made up my mind to write to Dave’s sister – I knew her name, and presumed that a letter to the house would reach her somehow – there was a rap at my door and there he stood, immaculate in a cream linen shirt and matching slacks, a red pullover slung casually round his shoulders and tied in a loose knot over his chest, shades in place, face as expressionless as ever.

“Get dressed, John,” he said, by way of greeting.

“I _am_ dressed,” I pointed out.

“Not like that. I’m not driving through Abingdon with some sort of pirate gigolo in the passenger seat. Little children will gather at the roadside to stone us as we pass. Mummy, they will say, can I have a rock to heave at the homosexuals? And Mummy will smile indulgently and fetch the special half-brick from its cupboard, thinking what it is to be young and carefree. Take off that ridiculous waistcoat and put a jacket on, I don’t want you catching cold.”

“We’re going to Abingdon?”

“At least. Perhaps further. The South of France is nice at this time of year. Bring a blanket, too, someone spilt Jameson’s on mine and it smells dreadful. Actually I think it was probably me.”

Parked on the double yellow lines outside college was a low-slung red sports car, a little two-seater with sleek lines and an open top. In the space behind the seats I observed a picnic hamper and two foil-topped bottles in an ice bucket. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Christmas present, was it?”

“John, don’t be tedious,” he said severely, opening the passenger door for me. “I thought you’d enjoy a drive in the country.”

“It’s February!” I cried, although in fact the weather, as if informed of Dave’s plans, was very good for the time of year: the sun was invisible, but the grey of the sky was luminous rather than leaden, and there was little wind. “And do you even know how to drive?”

“I’ve had some lessons.”

“How _many_ lessons?”

“John, if you’re going to be like this I shall take Kanaya instead.” He settled himself in the driver’s seat beside me and adjusted the mirror.

Of course, he was a perfectly good driver. He was a little fast and a little careless for my tastes, but he handled the car with confidence and aplomb, and on a Thursday morning in February the rural roads outside Oxford were all but clear. We bowled along for a good fifty miles and eventually came to a halt by the side of the road on top of a small hill overlooking some woodland. There we disembarked, spread out the spare blanket from my bedroom in the long grass under an ancient oak – I can almost feel the blanket now, a scratchy woollen affair in rather hideous brown and purple stripes – and sat down to our picnic, which turned out to consist of smoked salmon sandwiches, Scotch eggs, potato salad from Marks & Spencers, and an entire tiramisu bought from the Italian deli in the Covered Market. Two glass champagne flutes had been strapped under the hamper’s lid. Unfortunately Dave had not thought to pack cutlery, so we ended up scooping moist globs of tiramisu up with our fingers and ferrying them hastily to our mouths before the gooey cake lost all cohesion and turned into a mess of cream. Halfway through the picnic it started to rain, but the oak’s boughs were close and its leaves thick, and we stayed perfectly dry as we sat licking tiramisu off our hands and working our way down the first bottle of cava. Dave suggested we crack the second, but I advised that his driving skills might not benefit from such treatment, and to my surprise he reluctantly consented. When the wine was gone and the rain had more or less stopped, we dodged back to the car. By 4pm I was standing once more at the gates of college, watching Dave perform a neat three-point turn and roar away down Beaumont Street with a lazy wave of his hand.

* * *

This became our pattern for the rest of term. We still spent time in his room, but every week or so we would go and do what Dave called ‘touring the provinces’. Sometimes we would wander round sleepy country villages and have lunch in the local pub; other times we would head into deep country with a picnic.

One Saturday towards the end of term – it was the end of 7th week, and I had only one tutorial left – we went further than we had ever gone before. We drove down lane after lane until I began to wonder whether Dave was serious about the south of France this time. It was early March, and the English spring was just beginning to stretch its slack and atrophied muscles: a watery sun shone down from a sky patched with cloud, and shirtsleeves seemed a far-off possibility rather than a ludicrous fantasy dreamt up to scare children. When my companion finally swung the car onto a crescent of rutted earth before a wooden field-gate and killed the engine, we had been driving for nearly two hours.

We wandered across the first field and settled in the second, under a tree as usual, to attack the picnic. “Try this; it’s the second bottle of that rather splendid New Zealand Gewürztraminer Kanaya brought round last term,” Dave said, pouring me a glass. It gleamed pale gold in the sun. “Found it under my bed this morning. Thought it would serve well enough for a day like this.”

The Gewürztraminer was crisp and aromatic, and went perfectly with the roast chicken and smoked cheese in the hamper. I sat with my back pressed against the smooth bark and stared out across the field at a pair of swallows chasing each other in quick swooping circles. My left hand held the wine-glass; my right was wedged down into the loose soil by my side. Dave’s hand lay next to it, and he had looped his little finger idly over mine.

We sat in silence for a while and drank.

“John,” he said suddenly, “have you ever been happy?”

“I’m happy now,” I said, truthfully.

He considered this for a while.

“I think that must be why I like you,” he said.

When we went back to the car I expected him to pull one of his usual hair-raising middle-of-road U-turns and roar back off towards Oxford, but in fact he eased out of the field entrance and kept going straight. After five minutes I turned to look at him.

“Let me guess: you know a wonderful little restaurant in the Piazza della Signoria, and we can just about make it if we don’t stop for red lights?”

“The risotto,” he replied, “will cause you to renounce the paths of sin and take up holy orders on the spot.”

That meant he didn’t want to be pushed. I settled back in my seat and let him drive.

We exchanged not another word until twenty minutes later, when without warning he swerved the car left and through a pair of elaborate wrought-iron gates which stood open and inviting between two high brick posts crowned with marble lions. Suddenly we were bowling up a wide driveway between two geometrically perfect privet hedges. To the left and right I could see gravel paths, pristine lawns, single trees clipped neatly into spheres and cones, even what looked like a version of the _tholos_ from the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia at Delphi.

“Dave,” I said, suddenly alarmed, “where on Earth are we?”

His only answer was to stop the car with a satisfying crunch of gravel on a vast circular expanse centred around a grand and elaborate fountain, fully fifteen feet high at its tallest point. The marble island in the middle of the pool, from which jets of clear water sprang and tumbled at diverse points, was a confusion of mythical and allegorical figures I had neither the time nor the patience to identify properly. A muscular Perseus, nude but for a faintly camp pair of winged sandals, was engaged in the act of slaying a bearded half-man, half-serpent creature I took to be Cetus, while Andromeda, one breast bared, flimsy drapery plastered tantalisingly against her plump curves, clung in obvious desperation to his brawny thigh. I was no scholar of such matters, but it looked a very fine piece of work; Cetus’ coils and the trailing folds of the girl’s saturated dress were fluid and astonishingly lifelike.

“Ghastly, isn’t it,” said Dave. “Come on.”

Beyond the fountain a house loomed, vast and Baroque, stretching out on both sides to an extent I could scarcely believe. I was not given a chance to stop and inspect the warm honey-coloured sandstone, very similar to my own Ryder Quad – the rows of high arched windows between Doric pilasters, the vast stone urns crowning the balustrade around the roof’s edge, the elaborate scuptural decoration of the tympanum jutting forth from the frontage beneath the ornate dome. Dave was already jogging up the wide skirt of steps that led to the front doors. I had no option but to follow.

No words of mine could do justice to the staggering opulence of the entrance hall that lay within, lined as it was with statuary, paintings, antique chairs, inlaid mahogany end-tables, white marble busts on cylindrical plinths of ruddy granite, and no fewer than four grand fireplaces, each one dark and cold. The floor was a veritable plaza of white and black tiles, from the middle of which a sweeping stone staircase seemed to lift itself like a bird, without discernible strain or reinforcement, before splitting in two at a small landing and rising to galleries on the left and right of the hall. It was, without any doubt, the most magnificent interior I had ever seen.

Aged eleven, on a beach holiday in Cornwall with my father and sister, I had decided to wade as far out to sea as I could before my feet lost contact with the bottom. I had splashed happily out to a depth just above my knees, taken one more step, and plunged straight off the edge of a sandbar that lay concealed beneath the greenish waves. Now I felt a faint echo of the uncomprehending panic that had seized me then as the ground dropped away and the icy salt water slapped up around my face and flailing arms. It had been quite obvious from Dave’s lifestyle that he had few worries about money, a state I greatly envied, and I had always assumed that he lived in a big house to match. But I had pictured a detached five-bedroom number with a cellar and perhaps a swimming pool in the back garden, rather than what was, to all intents and purposes, a castle. It was becoming clear that Dave’s family not only had a lot of money, but had had a lot of money for a very long time indeed.

“Welcome to Strider’s Edge, John,” said Dave, with all the pride and excitement of a receptionist in an office building giving directions to the nearest cloakroom.

I was saved from the necessity of thinking what to say by the soft click of a door panelled in some dark wood on the far left of the hall. This opened, and a woman entered. She was tall and slim, and wore a white dress with a high neckline that hugged her figure without seeming ostentatiously tight or clingy, topped off with a long pink scarf of some floaty silken material. Her bleached-blonde hair was cut in a sort of tightly curled bob which contrived to look simple while clearly having been constructed with some care. In one hand she held a martini glass, while a slim black cigarette-holder trailed from between index and middle finger, leaving the other hand free. I gained the impression it was a customary arrangement.

“Hello, darling,” she said. “What a delightful surprise.” Her voice was low and musical and a little bored; she contrived to sound neither delighted nor surprised.

“Hello, Mother,” said Dave tightly.

She began to cross the tiles towards us, heels clicking as she walked. I felt suddenly trapped, for no reason I could place.

“You should have told me you were coming,” she said, with a note of exquisitely modulated reproach. “I’d have had Maisie get the Waterhouse Room ready. I shall tell the cooks to lay another two places for dinner at once.” She stopped a metre away and inclined her head slightly to present one smooth white cheek.

Dave kissed it with practised exasperation. “We’re not staying for dinner, Mother,” he said. “We were in the neighbourhood and I thought John might like a quick look at the place. That’s all.”

His mother turned to me as though discovering a second, long-lost son. “So _this_ is John! It’s _wonderful_ to meet you at last, darling. Dave’s told us _so_ much about you.”

“He has?”

“No, of course I haven’t. She’s just trying to make you uncomfortable,” Dave said irritably. I remembered enough of my manners to take her free hand, lift it, and brush the back of her fingers with my lips. She looked pleased. Dave looked disgusted.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” I said, and felt an immediate stab of horror. Was ‘ma’am’ right? What was her title? Should I have gone for ‘your Ladyship’?

“Darling,” – she had turned back to Dave – “you simply must stay for a drink, at least. I was expecting your sister from Cambridge twenty minutes ago. In fact I thought it was her car when you arrived. She’ll be here any second, I’m sure. John, can I offer you a sherry?”

“That simply makes it all the more imperative that we leave immediately. Come on, John, we must be getting back. That essay of yours won’t write itself.” My next essay wasn’t due until Thursday, but to point this out seemed unwise.

“It’s nice to see you too, Dave,” came a quiet, amused voice from behind us.

We turned, slowly, like actors in a farce. Standing in the open doorway from the drive was a young woman I had never seen before in my life, and yet recognised instantly. She was him, and yet she wasn’t. The pale hair that on him was tumbled and curled sat neatly on her in a plainer version of her mother’s bob. The porcelain skin and delicate bone structure that gave him a slight but occasionally striking effeminacy had bestowed on her a heart-shaped face so entirely perfect that I felt my mouth dry up. Her eyes were dark and cool and clever, her small violet lips crooked in a tiny smile. She wore a black cashmere cardigan over a purple frock that came down to her knees, beneath which I saw opaque black tights and buckled black leather pumps suitable for driving.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” muttered Dave under his breath.

I could not shake the feeling we were on a stage. Here on this vast and preposterous set, so unlike a real room in a real house where real people lived, Dave and his mother and I stood with the posed stillness one almost never sees in actuality. Even when people aren’t talking, they move; they shift their weight, rummage in their pockets, yawn, scratch at heads or backs of hands. We did none of these things. We simply waited as Rose Lalonde entered stage right and walked calmly towards us. I could hear the audience holding its collective breath.

She reached Dave, put a hand flat on his chest, and raised herself on tiptoe to kiss him gently on the lips. I felt hot and awkward, suspected I should look away, knew it was the one thing I was quite incapable of doing.

Then she turned to look at me.

“John,” she said, and I regretted not having a name that would have given that mouth more to work with, like Alexander, or Nikephoros Chartophylax. “Lovely to meet you.”

“Likewise,” I managed, and repeated my gauche gesture from before, although this time my hand seemed so sticky I could hardly bear to touch hers and my heart was drumming so loud I could not understand why it was not echoing off the cavernous ceiling. Her fingers smelt of jasmine. She accepted the greeting with an elegant tilt of the head.

“This is all intensely delightful,” said Dave, “but, have I mentioned? We must be going.”

“We wouldn’t want to keep you from your work,” Rose said solicitously. “I know how much it means to you.” She looked back at me. “John, I’m sorry not to get a chance to talk to you, but I hope I’ll see you again soon.”

“I’d like that,” I said helplessly.

“You must come and stay!” exclaimed her mother, as if a staggering truth of the universe had suddenly revealed itself to her. “Perhaps over the Easter holidays? There’s so much I’m sure David would like to show you.”

“They’re called vacations at Oxford, Mother, not holidays, as you perfectly well know. Come _on,_ John.”

As I followed him out into the sunshine I turned for a last look at the great chilly hall. They stood there side by side, mother and daughter, like abandoned chess-pieces on the black and white floor, watching us go.

* * *

On the way back to Oxford I said, “I was very embarrassed at not knowing what to call your mum. Should it have been ‘your Ladyship’ or something?”

“The correct form of address when speaking to my mother is ‘Hell-bitch’. But I forgive you for not knowing that, since you’re not up on your Debrett’s.”

“Oh come on, that’s a bit strong!” I objected.

He paused as if weighing his words, and when he spoke his voice was measured and even.

“My mother is an embittered, alcoholic shrew whose every word is a dagger laden with all the most unspeakable toxins of the Amazon. She has been known to kill robust and healthy men in the prime of life simply by making an observation about the weather. Five minutes later their skin turns blue and their internal organs liquefy into tomato soup. My sister is, I suspect, in league with dark forces. It is the only conceivable explanation for the knot of pure malignant evil which pulses in the withered hollow where her heart should be.”

I sniffed.

“Well, I thought they seemed lovely.”

“You would, John,” he said wearily. “You would.”


	6. Venus

_She’ll take a tumble on you  
Roll you like you were dice  
Until you come out blue  
She’s got Bette Davis eyes_  
\- Kim Carnes, ‘Bette Davis Eyes’

 _0h this is s0 0k thank y0u for skipping all the 80RING parts!!!!!!!!_  
\- ‘Aradia Megido’, _Vriska’s Sexy Sex Tips for Having Sexy Sex_

I received no invitation to stay at Strider’s Edge that Easter. Instead I went home and passed a pleasant if uneventful vacation with my father and sister. I wrote to Dave again, and this time he wrote back – a long letter in his usual scarlet ink, rambling and badly-punctuated but very funny, and with occasional flashes of sharply-observed detail.

The summer term at Oxford, Trinity Term, is renowned for its excitements: the arrival of what in England passes for good weather coincides with the end of exams for many undergraduates, and the second half of Trinity exists, at least as a Jungian archetype in the collective consciousness of Oxford students, as a sun-hazed medley of garden parties and outdoor theatre and punting and Pimm’s. It was with a sense of pleasurable anticipation that I returned to Ryder 5-1. The first excitement of the term, however, proved to come from a wholly unexpected quarter. I had only been back in college for two days when there was a knock at my door. I was in the middle of washing up some dirty plates in my cramped little sink. As I crossed the room, drying my hands on a teatowel, I ran down the possibilities in my mind’s eye: Dave (optimal); Vriska (almost as good); Kanaya (unusual but pleasant); Karkat (had happened once, late at night, and had been unexpectedly entertaining); Equius (bluh bluh).

Option Six caught me altogether off-guard. Standing behind the door, in a pink dress under what looked like the same black cardigan, was Rose.

“Hello, John,” she said with a little smile. “Sorry for showing up unannounced like this.”

“Rose! Um, no, it’s fine! Come on in, please – ” I tried to open the door further, dropped the teatowel, caught it, turned away quickly to scan the room. Thank God, we were little enough of a way into term that everything was still more or less in its right place: there were no empty wine bottles, no discarded socks, none of Vriska’s terrible doodles scrawled on stray bits of paper.

“Let me get you a drink! Tea? Coffee? Um, a glass of wine? I think I have some hot chocolate left over somewhere, unless Karkat ate it all...”

She gave the question serious consideration, tipping her head to the side as she thought it over.

“Let’s start with the tea, and move onto the wine,” she said finally. “I’ve never cared all that much for coffee.”

“Please, just sit anywhere. Milk and sugar?”

“A little milk, no sugar, thank you.” She chose an armchair facing the door and sat down in a single efficient motion, smoothing the skirts of her dress as she did so. The contrast with her brother, who tended to fling himself at chairs as if he intended never to leave their embrace, could hardly have been stronger.

“Is everything alright?” I asked, as I busied myself with the kettle. The first mug that came to hand was Vriska’s Christmas present to me. It bore an image of a statuesque young woman posing on a tropical beach in a bright blue swimsuit. When the mug was filled with hot water, some sort of thermal reaction caused the swimsuit to fade away, revealing more than was encouraged except at the most liberal of resorts. Vriska had customised it by using yellow paint to draw in a pair of horns and the caption YEAH!!!!!!!! I made a small choking noise and pushed it hastily behind the bookcase. “Is Dave OK?”

“I’m not here to see Dave,” she said, sounding amused. “I’ve spent most of the Easter vacation in his sparkling company. He doesn’t even know I’m in Oxford. I’m here to see you, John.”

“That’s jolly nice of you,” I replied, and inwardly cursed myself for an idiot. Two minutes in and I had already made clear that I regarded her visit as little short of a blessing from on high. I stirred the tea and took it over to her. “Be careful, it’s hot.”

“I didn’t have any lectures today,” she continued, “so I thought I’d hop on the train and come up for a visit. You’re not too busy, I hope?”

It was a novelty even to be asked; neither Vriska nor Dave showed the slightest concern for my plans when they decided they had need of my company. “No, not at all!” I said eagerly, and then decided this could stand to be toned down a little. “I mean, well, I’ve got some work to do, obviously. But nothing – nothing very urgent.”

“Oh, I’m glad,” she said. “I know they work you Classicists very hard.”

“What – er, what is it you actually read at Cambridge, Rose? I know I should know, but...”

“But Dave hasn’t told you,” she finished. “Of course not; why would he. I’m in my first year of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic. It’s a lot like your degree, really, but with fewer young shepherds sporting homoerotically in meadows and more beardy men hitting each other with axes.”

I laughed. “Sounds fun.”

“Well, that depends on how overt you like your phallic imagery,” she said, and sipped her tea. I furrowed my brow and tried to think of a good answer for that.

* * *

We went for lunch at a little cafe upstairs in the Covered Market, and then wandered around the Ashmolean for a while in the afternoon. Gradually I learnt her patterns of attack and defence, which were as complex and internested as her brother’s, but worked quite differently. She talked less, and listened more. She was extremely adept at drawing out information one had not intended to reveal; her chains of questions often ended up in a peculiar place far from where they had started, but by the time I realised where I was, it was inevitably too late. She was also much happier to provide straightforward answers to straightforward questions. I learnt more about the Lalonde family and its chequered history in fifteen minutes with Rose than I had in two terms with Dave. Yet on certain topics – her relationship with her mother, or indeed the details of her life at Cambridge – she deflected enquiry with a smooth fluency that made Dave’s dramatic changes of subject look clumsy and amateurish. I found her charming, funny, and easy to talk to, and had to be careful not to look too obviously disappointed when eventually she looked at her watch and announced that she had better be going. I walked her to the station to catch her train, and before passing through the ticket barrier she kissed me lightly on the cheek. I drifted back to college wearing what I realise in retrospect must have been a very foolish smile indeed.

* * *

The term’s surprises did not end with Rose’s departure. Only a week later, I was walking through college with Dave on our way back to my room when a voice behind us called my name.

“John, wait a second!”

We both turned. It was Terezi, white cane-tip skittering across the flagstones as she approached, fanged grin gleaming in the sun.

“Oh, hey, Terezi! Is everything okay?”

“Of course. I just wanted to ask you something about the reading list, but it’s not urgent. Who’s your friend?”

“Oh, um, this is Dave Lalonde. He’s a first year Classicist like us, but at St Al’s. Dave, this is my tute partner, Terezi Pyrope.”

“The one who always makes you look like an idiot in tutes?”

“Er, yes. That one.”

Terezi cackled. Dave looked her slowly up and down with a shadow of what I thought might be curiosity.

“You’re blind,” he said. I cringed. Dave had perfect manners when he wanted to use them, which was almost never.

“And you’re not,” she shot back.

There was a second’s pause.

“If you’re _blind,_ ” he drawled, “how did you know John was walking through quad?”

So accustomed was I to the way in which Terezi seemingly ignored her blindness, this had not even occurred to me.

“I could hear his voice,” she said dismissively. “It’s not hard to know where people are if you listen.”

Another short pause. I realised that some fractional shift in body language had occurred during the last twenty seconds. We had moved from being three people facing inwards to two people facing each other, with a third marooned on the outskirts. I was locked out, and I could not for the life of me understand how.

Slowly, Dave reached out and waved a hand, palm out and fingers spread, a couple of inches in front of Terezi’s face. I watched in horrified fascination.

“Stop that,” she said, but she sounded more amused than annoyed.

Dave cocked his head to one side. “Feeling the air currents, right?”

She nodded. “Plus the palm of your hand vents enough radiant heat for me to notice the temperature change at that distance. And I can smell the soap you’ve been using. Very subtle. Probably expensive. You are a man of discernment, Mr Lalonde.”

To my utter astonishment, a slow smile broke over Dave’s face, although it looked like it was being dragged out of him on hooks.

“A little troll Sherlock. Life is full of marvels. Care to hazard a guess what I had for breakfast this morning, Ms Pyrope?”

Without warning, Terezi lunged forwards and thrust her face to within about an inch of Dave’s. Stretching up on tiptoe, the pointed tip of her nose just reached the level of his mouth. Dave didn’t move a muscle.

She held it for a second, and then dropped back onto her heels and stepped away. She had the expression she normally wore in tutorials when she’d almost reached the right answer: fierce, eager, hungry. I had no idea what was going on any more.

“No,” she said, “but I can tell you’ve been drinking champagne.”

“Yes, that was breakfast,” said Dave. “Come on, John, it’s lunchtime. _Delightful_ to meet you, Ms Pyrope.”

“Yes, I should imagine it was,” she said gravely.

“What on Earth was all that about?” I demanded when we were safely back in my room and out of earshot.

“She seemed nice,” was all he would say.

* * *

When I think back now to my time at Oxford, that long, lazy Trinity is what shines out above all else. The weather was better than it had any right to be; I had little enough work that I could afford to take time off without scraping it from cracks and tiny corners of the day; but, most of all, some strange and indefinable perfume seemed to have risen on the summer breeze and clung to my clothes. I could not escape it. I had never been so happy. I felt as though I had stumbled by accident into the sort of life that wealthier and wiser men than I had spent years and fortunes on trying to locate; as though I had left the house to buy milk and found myself in El Dorado. I remembered Doc Scratch, in an early tutorial, explaining to me the concept of ‘epic glamour’: “Have you ever noticed, John, how few things in Homer or Vergil are of poor quality? All wine is sweet. All men are strong, or great-hearted, or godlike. All women have lovely hair and exquisite ankles and, in that curious phrase, deep girdles. Food is always good to eat. Everything not made of gold is shining bronze or pure ivory. Houses are well-built, tables are polished, water is clear and cold. The mist of glamour hangs and glitters over all.” That term – that high, sweet, far-off term – it hung over me too, and for all too short a time I knew what it was to live inside a story.

Perhaps my favourite memory of them all was the Friday at the end of Sixth Week. Even today, recalling it brings such a rush of pleasure that I feel almost guilty, as though I am treating myself to something I do not deserve and cannot afford. Rose had come up to visit again, this time to see Dave as well as me, and since it was beautiful weather and a substantial portion of the undergraduate body was trapped in exams, we decided to take advantage of an uncluttered river and go punting. Oxford punts seat five. One of these would naturally go to Kanaya; such honours were traditionally hers in recognition of the fact that everybody liked her. The fifth and final space caused some debate. None of us were terribly keen on the idea of being stuck in a small boat with Eridan for three hours. I favoured Vriska, but Dave argued that once on a water-borne vessel she would be wholly unable to control herself, and would give us no peace until we had grappled onto a rival punt, boarded it, stolen its picnic, quite probably defiled its women – her commitment to the scenario would be absolute – holed it below the waterline, and sailed off in triumph. I had to admit the extreme plausibility of this notion. I wondered if I should suggest inviting Terezi, but was unsure how Dave would react; he might think I was teasing him. So in the end we opted for Karkat.

Karkat, it transpired, had never been punting.

“What? Spend a perfectly valuable afternoon drifting out to sea in a shitty oversized canoe while Lalonde pounds champagne cocktails in the bow and Egderp gets the pole stuck up his nose? No fucking thank you. I’d rather contract some sort of terrible wasting illness and throw up blood ‘til bedtime. Fuck off.”

“Oh come on, Karkat, it’ll be fun!”

“John, are you – oh no, of course, you _are_ a colossal fucking retard. I’m sorry, that was insensitive of me. Lalonde, fuck, you can’t actually think this is a good idea. I mean, what the Hell is the point? You don’t go anywhere! You just float down the river, waffle some pretentious bullshit about the way the sunlight catches the magnolia blossom, turn round and float the fuck back! I might as well sit on a teatray and push myself up and down the High Street while dribbling all over my shirt!”

“It’s the wrong time of year for magnolia blossom, Karkat.”

“Oh God, no, Kanaya. Please. Don’t tell me you’re on board for this batshit suicide pact. John will capsize the boat and we’ll all get Weil’s disease and die twitching in the mud, surely you can fucking see that.”

“Vantas, you utter arse, you’re getting on that punt if I have to drag you there in a burlap sack like a puppy nobody wants. Save your juvenile rantings for someone they’ll impress. Say, hypothetically, a three-year-old with severe learning difficulties.”

This went on for some time in a similar vein until Rose, who had been perfectly silent thus far, suddenly leant forward in her chair and said, “You can’t swim, can you, Karkat?”

“ _Fuck you, I never learnt!_ ”

After that his defences collapsed in short order and we were able to lead him to the riverbank like a condemned man to execution. Dave forced him to carry the majority of the picnic ‘for being a prize cock’. When we reached our goal Kanaya and Rose sat side-by-side in the front of the boat in their Empire-line dresses, sipping pink gin and sharing a ludicrous white lace parasol that seemed to have come straight out of the prop cupboard for an Edwardian period drama. Dave took control for long enough to steer us a decent distance from the city centre, until we reached a quiet and tree-lined section of river with no onlookers, sun slanting through the dappled greenery above. Then he taught Karkat how to punt.

“This is the most indescribably moronic means of transport I have ever used in my life. It would be noticeably more efficient to lie flat on my face and pull myself along the ground with my tongue.”

“That’s just because you suck. Try not sucking, we’ll go faster.”

“Oh fuck you. Why the Hell are we going round in circles?”

“You’re steering all to one side. Look, hold the pole out straight behind – no, not like that, you spastic.”

“I can’t push off if it’s like that, dickhead!”

“No, you push off, and then you have to let it trail – oh, fuck _me_. It’s like a rudder, okay?”

“What in the name of fuck are you gibbering about?”

“On a _boat!_ Jesus Christ, how do you even put your trousers on in the morning? Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know. Yeah, push down, and then – other side – no, you’ve got to flip it. _Turn_ -ways.”

“Lalonde, you unbelievable dildo, we’re still moving at less than one mile per geological age. This sucks, and boats suck, and you suck most of fucking all.”

“If you want to get anywhere you’ve got to actually put some work in, you clown! It’s not even that hard! Stop waving the damn thing around and shove it in properly!”

“It’s too wet, I can’t get a fucking grip, okay?”

“That’s because you’re holding the wrong _end!_ ”

Kanaya was now laughing so hard she’d had to bury her face in Rose’s shoulder. Rose was smirking. “Brother dear, I shan’t even _begin_ to comment on the wonderful diorama I can access merely by closing my eyes. The audio is so lifelike.”

“Sorry, can’t hear you over this symphony of catastrophic failure. Come on, you nubby-horned lobotomy victim, lift the pole and then really _push_ down – no not that hard – no _let go of the fucking pole_ – ”

I am not sure I will ever see anything quite so funny as Karkat’s face as the punt, propelled by his mighty effort, shot straight and swift upstream, leaving him still clinging onto the pole, which now stood proudly upright in the river an increasing number of metres to stern. Rose and I leapt for the paddles, and were able to arrest the punt’s course and scull it back towards him before he could lose his frenzied deathlock grip and slide beneath the glassy green surface of the Cherwell. Then we fed him gin until he stopped gurgling.

* * *

A little later we tied the punt to an elderly tree-trunk that jutted out over the water, climbed out onto the bank and unpacked the picnic. Some memories from my life at Oxford have faded with time, colour leaching away into greys and sepia; some have blurred by rain or tears into little more than confused smudges of paint; some have been lost entirely, blown by stray winds into doorways and back alleys of my mind where I no longer dare to walk. This one, though, this bright snapshot, is pinned proudly front and centre, and its colours and shapes are as sharp and clear today as the day it was taken. Kanaya sitting with her knees tilted to the side and her dress pulled smooth over them, holding the parasol like the girl on some Victorian box of chocolates. Rose in the shade of a tree, her back to the trunk, a glass of champagne fizzing and glittering between her hands. Karkat sprawled awkwardly on the grass like a deckchair that hadn’t folded up properly, one hand raised to push spikes of black hair up and away from his eyes, laughing despite himself. The feathery grass under me, some tiny bug crawling along the track of my wrist, the spark of chilled white wine and olives on my tongue, the soft slop of water on wood as the punt rocked and bobbed gently at its moorings. And Dave, always Dave, lounging like a shepherd of Arcady in tight black jeans and a ridiculous Byronic shirt with floppy sleeves and an open drawstring neck; propped on one elbow, eyes veiled behind those eternal shades, mouth twitched up at the corner in the smile of a man who knows what he has and knows that, for now, no-one will take it from him.

When we returned to the boatsheds I found myself off to one side with Karkat, tying up the punt while Dave helped Rose and Kanaya onto dry land.

“I told you it’d be fun,” I said quietly.

He looked furious. “That was the best day of my life,” he growled. “And if you tell Lalonde, I’ll fucking kill you.”

* * *

One more incident from near the end of that strange and dreamlike term must be recounted, although at the time I thought it held no significance for anyone but me. One evening a group of us went to a nightclub in the city centre, as we sometimes did, although Dave’s scorn for the quality of Oxford DJs was so monolithic that we made the venture more rarely than one might imagine. (“It’s got to be _really_ cool, or _really_ ironic,” I recall him sighing to me on more than one occasion. “These fuckers can’t do either right.”) On this particular night, which was otherwise unmemorable, we started out with half a dozen people, but when the lights came up at the end I looked around and discovered that nearly all my friends had disappeared. Only Vriska and I were left.

“What happened to the others?” I shouted, ears still ringing too much to calibrate volume properly.

“No idea,” she yelled back. “Lalonde gave up when they played ‘Sex On Fire’. Don’t know where the rest went. Outside, maybe.”

But there was no-one outside other than a few huddling smokers. As we stood looking up and down the darkened pavement, there was a rumble of thunder like some unimaginably heavy object being dragged across the floorboards of the sky, and I felt the first drops of rain prickle on my bare forearms.

“Oh Hell, it’s going to piss down, isn’t it?” said Vriska.

“Come back to mine,” I said, “St Al’s is miles away. I could do with a cup of tea.”

She nodded and took my arm. As we hurried back across silent roads and past shouting knots of revellers drifting back from other clubs or parties, the skies opened. Rain came down like a curtain being dropped, a vertical wall of water which cut visibility to about six feet in less than a second. We both shrieked, made a half-hearted attempt to seek shelter, and gave up. I was wearing light slacks and a tee-shirt, my skin was already slick with sweat from the club, my head was fogged and thick from whatever bad lager had been on offer at the bar, and the rain was pleasantly cool. After a few steps I stopped dead, spread my arms wide, and looked up at the clouds. Within a couple of seconds I was half drowned, and I looked back down spitting and blinking and spluttering with laughter.

“Come _on,_ idiot!” Vriska called, tugging on my arm. “I’m getting rainwater in places a lady doesn’t talk about!”

By the time we fell through the door of my room we looked like we’d been thrown in a swimming pool. My clothes had tripled in weight, and actual streams of water were dribbling from the bottom of my trouser-cuffs. Vriska’s summer frock might as well have been sprayed on by hosepipe. We were stumbling against each other and giggling, and the air was thick and hard to breathe with an inevitability I had not yet learnt to recognise.

“Go and grab a towel,” I said weakly, “they’re in the bedroom. I’ll put the kettle on.”

As I turned away, I felt a wind on the side of my face and saw a dark shapeless object whip past me. It hit the armchair with a wet slap and resolved into a tangled, sopping dress.

I turned slowly to find that Vriska had been replaced with a beatific vision of gleaming wet grey skin and taut black lace.

“Now, John,” she said in businesslike tones, unhooking her suspender belt, “pay attention.”

* * *

I paid very careful attention.

* * *

When I woke the next morning I was alone, stark naked, and gripped by a thumping headache. I swung my legs uncertainly out of bed and staggered into the main room, noticing three seconds late with a sense of vague satisfaction that the curtains were, in fact, closed. There was a note on my desk, written in blue biro on the back of a lecture handout.

John!!!!!!!!

Last night was pretty good. Not perfect, of course! We’ll need to work on a few things, particularly stamina. 8ut for a 8eginner, it was excellent. I reckon with a little advice, and a LOT of practice, we can turn you into a guaranteed WINNER in the 8edroom! And remem8er, it’s no fun if no8ody wins!!!!!!!! ::::)

V xoxo

P.S. I won.

Feeling very confused, and rather like cotton wool, I shrugged my way into my dressing gown and set about making a cup of tea.


	7. Ceres

_O for a draught of vintage! that hath been  
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvéd earth,  
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,  
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth.  
O for a beaker full of the warm South,  
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,  
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim  
And purple-stainéd mouth;  
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,  
And with thee fade away into the forest dim._  
\- John Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’

One morning at the end of my first year, like a logician’s closed parenthesis or one of Sollux’ oblique strokes, there was a knock at my door and I discovered Equius Zahhak. His face was grave, but then his face was always grave, so that told me little. I let him in and we moved with brisk formality through the preliminaries: tea was offered and accepted, enquiries exchanged over the successes of the term, speculations floated on activities for the Long Vacation. He was going trekking and mountain-climbing in Peru with a group of fellow engineers. I said I might go abroad, perhaps to Greece, or Italy. This seemed only to confirm his worst fears.

“Look here, Egbert,” he said at last, setting down his empty mug with what I thought was a trace of awkwardness. “I hope you won’t feel I’m interfering, but man to man, you really need to have a think about next year.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

He mopped his brow. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone takes a while to get settled in. In my first term I got in with a terrible bunch of lefties, seemed a perfectly sound lot until they started dyeing their hair and talking about, you know, whatever it is they call it. Polly something.”

“Polyamory?”, I suggested helpfully, remembering its appearance underneath ‘television’, ‘homosexual’, and ‘automobile’ on Terezi’s list of words that should be banned.

“That’s the one.” Vigorous mopping. “Disgusting. Absolute bloody nightmare. Took me ‘til Hilary to find out where the decent types were. Point is, everyone makes mistakes early on. But really, Egbert, I don’t know if you’ve done it on purpose or what, but I have to tell you that you seem to have fallen in with the absolute _worst_ set in the University.”

I knew perfectly well what he meant, but I was determined not to make his life any easier than necessary. “Oh come on,” I said mildly, “Sollux Captor’s not that bad.”

“He’s a freak,” said Equius impatiently, “him and those bloody stupid glasses, but I’m not talking about him. No, I mean – ” and again the furtive manner, as though ears might even now be pressed against the door – “ _Lalonde._ Him and his little crowd.”

“I didn’t realise you knew each other.”

He looked horrified. “Never spoken to him in my life! But, you know, one _hears_ things. The things he and his cronies get up to. Did you hear about – ” and he proceeded to relate in brief and visibly nauseous synopsis three incidents from the past year, one of which was entirely true, the second of which had been slightly embroidered at some stage in the transmission, and the third of which was an outright fiction but would have amused Dave hugely had he learnt of it.

I tried not to laugh. “Dave Lalonde’s not so bad when you get to know him, Equius,” I said. “I mean, he likes a drink, and I suppose he’s kind of image-conscious, but he’s a nice guy.”

Equius snorted. “I think he’s a bloody liability. His family’s meant to be pretty odd too, but he’s just out of control. He’ll come to a bad end, you take it from me. Be in rehab by the time he’s twenty-one, I shouldn’t wonder, or worse. Your tute partner, what’s her name, Pyrope, she agrees with me. Talked to her in quad the other day. Says she thinks someone needs to take Lalonde in hand, get on top of the situation. Quite right too.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of this last piece of information, but I had no time to process it. Equius pressed remorselessly on.

“And the worst of it is, Egbert, I’m starting to hear _your_ name mixed up in all of this. It just won’t do. You’re bringing the name of the college into disrepute, old boy. I mean, everyone knows St Aloysius’ is a breeding-ground for that sort of filth – what can you expect when the President’s a Socialist – but here at St Ben’s we work hard and play straight, you know? And it’s not just Lalonde, either. I mean, really. _Vriska Serket?_ Do you know what people _say_ about that girl? If you’d heard what I’ve heard...” and he broke off with a theatrical shudder and another frenzy of mopping.

“She’s a blue-blood,” I reminded him.

He flushed blue himself. “That’s the most outrageous part! A troll of her blood status, carrying on like that – it’s just a disgrace. It shouldn’t be allowed. And as for Er – for – for Count Ampora – well, to see him mixed up with that, that, it just – ” and, somewhat to my alarm, he made a strangled choking noise and tailed off entirely. Sweat was now running freely down his face and beefy arms, and he was gripping the sides of the chair with such force I was afraid they might splinter. He looked as though he were having a bullet removed from his thigh without anaesthetic. I wondered if I should give him something to bite down on.

Determined to get him out of my room before I inadvertently caused his death by my sheer unbridled iniquity – for one thing, I couldn’t think what I’d tell Nepeta – I crossed to my bookshelf and picked up the cut-glass decanter I had bought with Dave at an antiques market a few miles outside Oxford, on one of our Sunday excursions some weeks ago. It sloshed heavily. I turned round, leant an elbow on the top of the shelves with as much of Vriska’s languid poise as I could summon, and said lazily, “I’m terribly sorry to have put you out, old boy. But the fact is, they’re just my sort of people, you know? I just feel like I _belong._ I usually take a glass of sherry at about this time. Will you join me?”

He left shortly afterward, and I watched him walk away across quad shaking his head.

* * *

A week after I reached home, a letter arrived.

strider’s edge  
july?

dear john

mother is away on the continent reducing the lives of innocent men to rubble and despair. rose and i are stuck at home by ourselves and if we have to spend another day in each others company either i shall throttle her or she will put the bread knife in my back. the bread knife is not very sharp so this will take considerable force and several attempts but she is a determined young woman as i am sure you know. you must come and auspistice between us or whatever the trolls call it. if you waste time we may both be dead. dont bother to pack, we have enough towels here to carpet a cricket pitch. must sign off as i have just seen her go to the woodshed and i think she may be fetching an axe. phone to let me know what train youre on.

d

I explained to my father that my friend needed help and I was going to go and stay for a week or so. He looked pleased. Since he only ever heard a carefully edited and strictly redacted account of my Oxford career, one revolving mostly around essay marks, plays I had seen, and interesting things my tutor had said, I think he worried that I didn’t get out enough. “You’re a man, now, son,” he said. “You must do whatever you think is right.” His only condition was that I was forbidden to leave the house until he had baked a cake for me to bring along.

I arrived at the country station of Bishop’s Merkin – a comically neglected little stop, scarcely more than two weed-cracked concrete platforms and a tin shack that sometimes sold tickets – around four o’clock the following afternoon, trundling a small suitcase. I had taken Dave at his word about the towels, but I could not quite bring myself to show up without even a change of clothes. My father’s cake, an elaborate lemon gateau, was in a Tupperware box tucked under my other arm. It had been a glorious day, and there was still real heat in the sun; I hoped I should not have to walk too far to the house. The air smelt of meadowsweet and honeysuckle, and I could hear chaffinches in a tree somewhere nearby.

Outside the station Rose was waiting in a pink sports car of a similar model to Dave’s. She was wearing a white dress, large sunglasses, and a cloche hat. She smiled when she saw me.

“Hello, John. You made good time. Stick the case in the boot and hop in. You’d better keep hold of that rather magnificent cake.”

“You’re still alive, then,” I said, partly out of an attempt at humour, partly from foolish but genuine relief.

She looked puzzled. “How d’you mean?”

“Oh, er, Dave – Dave suggested in his letter that I had to come and see you both or you might end up killing each other.”

“Of course he did,” she said dryly. “Very adroit. That way he manages to invite you to the house without having to convey any genuine desire to see you or pleasure in the prospect of your company. Keeps everything nice and businesslike. I don’t know how you put up with him, John.”

I laughed. “I don’t either, sometimes. Are you really alone in the house?”

We were on the road, now, slipstream plucking at strands of my hair as the car hummed along between ancient field-hedges higher than a man.

“More or less. Mother took all her personal staff with her to the villa, and lots of the others are on holiday themselves. Dave and I sent away the few who were left, told them to go and have a break. It’s perfectly ridiculous two healthy people of our age being waited on hand and foot. We can cook for ourselves, and if the silverware isn’t dusted until Mother comes home it won’t kill anyone, except possibly her. In fact I may go round later with a little packet of extra dust, sprinkling. Would you light me a cigarette? They’re in the glovebox.”

I lit two and passed her one, trying not to think about Vriska’s mouth.

“Thanks. No, a couple of the gardeners are still around, and the cook’s said she’ll come in if we need her – she only lives a mile away – but essentially it’ll just be the three of us. I hope that’s alright.”

“Perfectly.”

“Dave’s melodrama notwithstanding,” she said, turning her eyes momentarily from the road to glance at me, “we’re both really looking forward to having you, John.”

* * *

The fortnight I spent at Strider’s Edge was the sweet culmination of that extraordinary summer. The house, the gardens, and the surrounding countryside became little more than one enormous playground. Every day we would go and explore: either taking a picnic and wandering through fields and woodlands in search of the perfect spot, or simply heading off into the recesses of the house, most of which were great gloomy crypts of dusty old furniture and bizarre curios. Rose said that there were over one hundred and fifty rooms in total, and she didn’t think anyone had ever been in them all. Round every corner was some new prize to occupy us: a fully-functional seventeenth-century harpsichord in ornate rosewood, on which I managed to pick out a few tunes while Dave and Rose sang comically solemn operatic arias, his flutey tenor winding in pleasant strands around her slightly smoky alto; a cabinet full of badly-written romantic novellas called things like _The Prince and the Gypsy-Girl_ or _The Island of Desire_ , extracts from which Dave performed in a flat, bored monotone to Rose’s and my howls of disbelieving glee; an old dressing-up box, which despite the attentions of generations of moths furnished us with enough intact costumes for our one-act play _I Told You About Stairs_ , an incomprehensible metaphysical farce concerning two foolish drunkards who find a chest of enchanted gold. Rose summarised it aptly as _Carry On Waiting For Godot_. Dave’s climactic appearance as the terrible Pirate Queen Mindfang, dressed in what I can only describe as piratical drag, was disturbingly erotic.

Each evening we got drunk. The wine cellars beneath Strider’s Edge were labyrinthine and abundantly stocked; presumably the need to support centuries of alcoholics had made their maintenance a priority. We decided this would be a good opportunity to teach ourselves about wine, and so with the help of a dusty 1950s manual called _The Character of the Grape_ which Rose found in the library, we held several after-dinner wine-tastings in the conservatory at the back of the house. Each of these followed the same pattern, beginning with preposterously methodical care – glasses rinsed in mineral water between mouthfuls, plain crackers to cleanse the palette, candles to warm the wine and a lamp for inspecting its colour – and descending gradually into anarchy as the haze descended and we forgot which bottle was which. We would end up sprawled in our chairs feebly competing to design the perfect critical epigram.

“This wine,” Rose said, “is like a Stradivarius violin, played in a dusty attic quite bare of furniture.”

“A good, firm body, its underlying musculature softened but not yet obscured by the thickening of middle age.”

“An eager little wine, its bright eyes shining with the will to please, one of its legs tragically crippled by polio.”

“A crisp bouquet of celery, undercut with impetuous notes of... cheese? No, perhaps not cheese. Try this one, do you get cheese?”

“John, this is _water._ ”

“This brings to mind strawberries, poured out of a silver jug to the accompaniment of pan-pipes.”

“A nude woman with long red hair, hiding behind a marble pillar.”

“Small children playing in a forest. Nearby, a grizzly bear licks its claws and waits.”

“This is a rabbit, but it’s a very _good_ rabbit. It doesn’t cause any trouble.”

“This wine,” Dave said, with the slow, exaggerated precision only found in those ten seconds away from falling off their chairs, “is like being vigorously sodomised by _an entire fruit salad._ ”

Rose arched an eyebrow which would have made Florentine architects weep. “I wouldn’t know.”

* * *

Looking back from a position of advantage, I can see now there were currents at play that summer of which I remained largely unaware. One particularly resplendent afternoon Dave and I had headed out to the pool – Strider’s Edge did in fact have a swimming pool, tucked away round one side of the house where it couldn’t interfere with the Classical lines of the gardens proper. I was reclining on a sun-lounger in shorts and shades, tall glass of Pimm’s by my elbow, pretending to read a book about the films of Bernardo Bertolucci but actually watching Dave swim. He was an astonishingly good swimmer; his lean body tore through the water like a shark’s, using a smooth front crawl that seemed to displace no excess water at all, and he could cover the length of the pool – which was close to Olympic size – in almost no time. A pair of tinted goggles maintained the privacy of his eyes. Watching spellbound, I heard a small cough and looked round to see that Rose had arrived on the terrace in a calf-length kimono of some dark silken material. As I turned, she shrugged it off with an economical gesture and it puddled to the floor, revealing a devastating one-piece purple swimsuit with a scooped neckline and no back at all. She stretched lazily. My book tumbled from my nerveless hands.

“John,” she said, as though catching sight of me for the first time, “would you mind _awfully_ putting some cream on my shoulders for me? I burn so easily in this weather.”

As I scrambled to obey, I saw Dave surface, shake his hair clear of water, and shoot Rose what was unmistakeably a glare.

* * *

One night we played drinking games, sitting on the paving-stones of the side terrace with a bottle of vodka, a couple of candles in saucers for light. Ring of Fire collapsed in ignominy because no-one could remember the rules, 21 was cancelled because I proved to harbour an unsuspected natural talent for it, and so we ended up on Truth or Dare. I had played this a couple of times at parties while in the Sixth Form, but it had always petered out rather awkwardly once people had mustered the courage to start asking really personal questions, or proposing really spectacular dares. First a girl would refuse to answer, then someone else would back out of a dare because it was dangerous, and eventually the whole thing would become unsustainable.

Dave and Rose had no such scruples. Dave’s first dare to me was to go and jump in the Cetus fountain, fully clothed. I decided that I had relatively little to lose by this, since it was a warm evening and the fountain looked clean, so I dashed out down the driveway – Rose and Dave hanging over the stone balustrade to watch – hopped in, and splashed around a bit for good measure as if I were restaging _La Dolce Vita_. On my soggy return to the terrace, I got a round of applause, and Rose raised her eyebrows. “Are those some rather nicely-defined abdominals I see under that clinging and waterlogged shirt, John? You shouldn’t hide such things from your friends. It isn’t right.”

“Keep it in your knickers, sister dear,” said Dave, and spun. The bottle stopped on him. “Oh, fuck. Truth.”

“What do you think of Terezi Pyrope?” I asked cunningly.

He turned languorously to stare at me. “She seems a delightful young lady.”

“Bullshit.”

“You asked, I answered. Next!”

Next was me again. I pushed wet hair out of my eyes and groaned. “Er... truth, I guess.” Rose glanced at Dave, who nodded as if to say _sure, go ahead._

“What’s the furthest you’ve ever got with a girl?” she asked sweetly.

I felt myself going pink, and yet at the same time was secretly delighted I had a decent answer. Had we played this game over Easter the embarrassment would have been incalculably much greater. “Um,” I said. “Quite a long way.”

“Don’t be coy, John. How far?”

“Well, I mean, sort of, all the way. I suppose.”

Dave whistled. Rose gave him a smug little grin. “Told you so.”

“Egbert, you sly fox! You _have_ been busy while my back was turned. Who was it, Vriska?”

“That’s two questions,” I demurred.

“Vriska. Bloody Hell. What was she like? I’ve always wondered.”

“Excuse me,” said Rose primly, “there are ladies present. You gentlemen can compare details of your conquests over port and cigars when I have retired to my sewing.” She spun. It landed on her. “Damn. Dare, please.”

Dave scrambled to his feet. “Be right back.”

He dashed off into the house. Rose looked at me. I shrugged.

Thirty seconds later he was back, carrying a wine glass full of some dubiously-coloured swirling liquid. He handed it to her. “Chin-chin.”

Rose sniffed it and pulled a face. “Do I have your word,” she asked sceptically, “that there is nothing in this noisome cocktail which is not actually fit for human consumption? Bleach, for example, or shoe polish?”

Dave looked solemn and put a hand on his heart. “I swear on our mother’s sadly vacant grave,” he said, “that everything in that glass is a genuine beverage. Or, in one case, foodstuff.”

“Oh well,” said Rose. “ _À votre santé,_ John.”

She threw it back without hesitation. Her face stayed perfectly still for a second or two, and then she blinked.

“Well,” she said, “I can confidently report that Angostura bitters and minestrone soup do not mix at _all._ ”

“Was it bad?” asked Dave sympathetically.

“Revolting. I am going to kill you in your sleep.” She sipped her red wine and spun. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, this thing is rigged. I can’t take another one of those, my stomach and liver will collapse in perfect harmony. Truth.”

Dave looked at me and made a polite gesture to indicate that I had the floor.

“Have you ever been in love, Rose?” I asked.

“No,” she said easily. “It’s bad for the circulation.”

The game continued. I noticed that both Dave and Rose had a strong preference for Dare over Truth, which struck me as an apt character summary. We dared Dave to telephone a sex line, which he did in fine style from the ‘phone in the entrance hall: starting off hopeful and nervous, then gradually introducing more and more inventively fetishistic obscenity until finally he held the receiver away from his ear with a look of mild surprise. “She hung up on me,” he observed ruefully. “Poor woman has obviously led a very sheltered lifestyle.”

Rose dared me to close my eyes, which I did, only to have her wrap her flimsy scarf around my head as a blindfold and tie it tight. She then ordered me to lie down flat on the terrace. I complied in an ecstasy of fear, heart beating wildly. After a moment, a pair of strong hands gripped my ankles, and cool, expert fingers began to tickle the soles of my feet. I was very tense, and ticklish feet have always been a weakness of mine, so within less than a second I was convulsing like an electroshock patient, slapping my arms wildly against the cool stone, jerking and twitching and arching my spine and screaming to high heaven. Rose’s scarf slipped down over my nose so that all I could smell was her perfume. I thrashed in pink-tinged darkness, blind, choking on jasmine, howling for mercy, every nerve ending in my body begging for release, barely feeling the pain where my exposed skin scraped and chafed against the rough paving slabs, until finally Dave’s grip relaxed and I sprawled sweaty and whimpering and postcoital, dragging in great gulping, shuddering breaths.

Dave dared Rose to take her top off, which she did, after a finely-judged display of maiden hesitation that made the whole thing ten times worse. She was wearing a pale pink bra with discreet lace edging – a perfectly functional garment, but on me it had the erotic impact of an entire Victoria’s Secret catalogue stapled to the front of an express train. I shifted weight and tried to rearrange my trousers into a more comfortable configuration without anyone noticing.

Eventually the bottle landed on me again.

“...Dare,” I said.

“Give Rose a kiss,” said Dave, instantly.

I am not sure what happened to my face, but they both collapsed in fits of helpless laughter.

“What?!”

“Oh, poor John,” gasped Rose. “Am I really so repulsive? Did I forget to shave off my moustache this morning?”

“You looked like we’d dared you to make sweet, sweet love to Karkat in a bath full of peanut butter,” explained Dave, brushing away a tear that had trickled down from under his shades. “My God. If abject horror had a face, it would look _exactly_ like that.”

Blushing furiously, I got up on my knees and shuffled over to where Rose sat. She eyed me mischievously as I approached. Once I came within range, she knelt up too and closed her eyes.

Barely able to think for the blood screaming in my ears, I leaned forwards and kissed her gingerly on her neat purple mouth. Instantly the tip of her tongue flickered out to run around the inside of my lips. She twined her arms round my neck, pressing the bare flesh of her torso against mine – I had opened my shirt in a bid to cool down after the tickling ordeal – and before I knew what was happening I was locked in an enthusiastic French kiss with Rose Lalonde, kneeling together in the night air, skin against hot skin, all under the critical gaze of her brother.

We broke off and Dave applauded. Rose fell away from me, giggling, and threw herself backwards onto the paving slabs, one white arm against her brow, the other flung out into the candlelight like a ravished maiden dragged away by some bearded warrior in a seventeenth-century Italian painting.

“John, I can stand it no longer. Your embraces have melted my chaste restraint. My narrow loins are as the heart of a star. Take me in your strong, manly arms, and make me a _woman._ ”

Although it was 2am before we all left the terrace and went to our separate beds, I took a long time getting to sleep that night.


	8. Juno

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the beginning of John Egbert's second year at university, we also move into the second half of our story.
> 
> Normally I prefer to give away as little as possible about plots, but I'm also very keen not to upset anyone by mistake, so be warned: things are about to start going downhill. You will notice I have updated the fic warnings accordingly. There are no horrible surprises in this chapter, but from now on in the story people are going to start getting hurt, in various ways, some of them quite badly. There won't be anything really graphic - it's not going to turn into _Saw_ all of a sudden - but if you are at all uneasy about the prospect of unpleasant things happening to characters you love, proceed past the half-way mark with extreme caution. You are officially entering the deep end, and there ain't no lifeguards.
> 
> Thank you all very much for sticking with me thus far, and for all the lovely feedback I've received. I hope you enjoy the second act of _Strider's Edge_.
> 
> (This chapter contains optional bonus audio features! When you reach a link in the text, opening in a new window and dismissing any irritating advertisements for stupid UK television programmes will _heighten your immersion_ to previously undreamt-of levels, as well as providing a little bit of sly character commentary in places. Turning up the volume and stopping reading long enough to have a MOTH3RFUCK1NG D4NC3 P4RTY is, of course, encouraged.
> 
> EDIT: I've hopefully sorted out the problem of the latter two songs not being accessible in the USA, but it's a bit hard to be sure, so if it's still not working could some kind US reader let me know?)

_stilettos and broken bottles  
I’m spinning around in circles_  
\- Robyn, ‘Dancing On My Own’

The beginning of my second year also saw my sister Jade’s arrival in Oxford. She had considered applying to St Benedict’s, but I had flatly forbidden this; much as I loved my sister, I had no wish to risk bumping into her every time I stumbled drunk through Ryder Quad at midnight. As a result, she was starting at St Cecilia’s, a small and famously friendly college located just south of the city centre, reading Biology. Ever since her results had come out in August her excitement had been palpable. My father took her up for the beginning of Freshers’ Week while I remained at home, as we all felt she might benefit from a couple of days to find her feet without the looming presence of her brother. I followed on the Thursday.

The first Saturday evening of term, I was in my new room with Dave and Rose, who had come up to visit as she now did almost every weekend. I had formed the impression that she had few friends at Cambridge; certainly she had become more or less a permanent fixture of our weekend parties, to my secret delight. We were sharing a bottle of wine and playing cards when there was an excited tapping at my door.

“Come in,” I called.

The door burst open and Jade entered, her face wreathed in an enormous smile which quickly changed to embarrassed confusion when she saw my guests.

“Oh – oh wow, sorry John, I didn’t know you had, uh, people...”

“No, come on in,” I said. “These are my friends Dave and Rose Lalonde – you remember I went to stay with them over the summer?”

“Oh _yes!_ ” she said, beaming again. “You’re the ones with the amazing house! John told me all about it, it sounds _so_ cool!”

“It’s not so cool when you have to live there all the time,” said Dave lazily, “but yes.”

As Jade flopped down into the one remaining empty armchair, Rose blinked and put a hand to her forehead.

“Are you alright?” I said.

“Oh – yes,” she replied, sounding a little hesitant. “I’m sorry, I just got the strongest burst of _déjà vu_. Jade, have we – have we met before somewhere?”

“No,” said Jade happily, “but I know just what you mean. John’s told me so much about you guys I feel like I know you already.”

I frowned, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Rose was quite right. I was sure that neither she nor Dave had ever so much as seen my sister, except perhaps in photographs; and yet this did not feel like a first meeting. It was very odd.

“I’m just being silly,” Rose said lightly. “What are you reading, Jade?”

Thus prompted, Jade began one of her trademarked cheerful rambles about her course, her college, the people she’d met, and all the various excitements I remembered from my own Freshers’ Week. I kept an eye on the other two, ready to cut her off if they showed signs of boredom, but they were very patient: Rose asked helpful questions, and even Dave seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say. I stared at the cards in my hand and tried in vain to pin down the vague feeling of familiarity that refused to go away.

When she ran out of steam I said, “Do you want a glass of wine? We’re not doing much, just playing cards.”

“No, I have to go. There’s a film showing in the JCR at nine and I promised my friend I’d be there. I just thought I’d come and see if you were in.” She stood up. “It was really nice to see you both!”

 _Meet you both_ , I thought, but said nothing.

“Are you doing anything tomorrow evening?” Dave asked diffidently.

“Um... no, I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I’m having a sort of party in my rooms at St Aloysius. Not really a party so much as a little gathering. These two’ll both be there. You’d be more than welcome if you wanted to come along.”

“Oh wow! Thank you, that’s so kind, I’d love to come! What time?”

“Eight o’clock, Vane Quad four-thirteen. Ask at the Lodge if you’re not sure where to go. No need to bring anything.”

“Awesome! I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow, then! Bye, John.”

She left grinning as happily as when she’d arrived. I turned to stare at Dave.

“A Fresher gets an invitation to a Lalonde party, just like that? I had to wait two weeks for mine, _and_ I had to buy you quail’s eggs.”

“You’re not as pretty as she is,” he said. I threw a cushion at him.

* * *

Aside from the presence of Jade, there was little to mark that Sunday’s party out from its many predecessors. Dave had kept the same rooms for a second year, so our surroundings were very familiar, and the guests were the usual crowd: the two of us, Rose, Jade, Vriska, Kanaya, Karkat, Eridan. I made sure not to drink too much, and kept an eye on Jade in case she got out of her depth, but she seemed delighted to meet so many new people.

It was the first time I had seen Vriska since the night of the heavy rain, before the vacation. I was not sure how to behave. Should we ignore each other? Make stilted conversation? I no longer even knew how I felt about what had happened between us. I had waited weeks for her to contact me, but she had not, and eventually I had filed it away in my mind as simply another adventure – more exciting even than was usual with Vriska, to be sure, but as much of a one-off as the time we had tried to steal an entire dinner service from St Matthew’s, or the time we had got lost in Jericho at 3am while dressed as the Doctor and Amy. (The bow tie had suited her surprisingly well.) Nonetheless, I found myself hoping she would come over and say hello, but in fact she spent much of the evening talking to Jade, and we barely exchanged ten words between us. Dave shot me a couple of knowing looks, but refrained from making any public comment, for which I was grateful.

When things broke up around midnight – Eridan and Vriska heading off to another party, Karkat slinking away without even a goodbye as usual – I walked Jade back to St Cecilia’s through the darkened streets.

“So, what did you think?”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully. “Kanaya was lovely.”

“You cannot hope to beat Kanaya Maryam in a lovely-off. She is simply the loveliest there is.”

“Haha, yeah. I wasn’t quite sure about Vriska. She was cool, and she made me laugh a lot, but she kept looking at me a bit like I was a double cheeseburger and she hadn’t eaten in days.”

“Oh, that’s just how Vriska looks at people. I don’t think she has anything terrible in mind,” I said, wishing I felt as confident as I sounded.

“She’s ever so pretty. Did you and she used to go out or something?”

“No! Uh, well, it was a little complicated, but no. We were never going out. I mean, I’m fairly sure we weren’t. Why do you say that?”

“It was just the way she talked about you. I think she really likes you, John.”

I laughed. “Maybe as a pet. I’m not sure Vriska likes anyone like that. What did you make of Eridan?”

She wrinkled her nose. “He was creepy. I got stuck on the sofa with him for like half an hour. He was telling me this big long story about how it was so difficult being a highblood because no-one really understood his life, but I think he was just hitting on me. He kept staring at my chest. I’m not sure what I’d have done if Kanaya hadn’t rescued me.”

“Poor old Eridan,” I said with a grin. “He never has much luck with the girls.”

“Well, maybe he should try not being so boring, and also a giant pervert,” she said crossly.

“I’ll suggest it to him next time I see him. What about Karkat?”

She beamed. “I really liked Karkat.”

I stopped dead in the middle of the pavement to stare at her. “Come again?”

“He was so funny! All angry and grumpy all the time, and he used some _awful_ words, but you could tell he was just really nervous. I bet he’d be a sweetheart if he just stopped worrying so much. And I liked his hair. It’s cute. I tried to ruffle it a couple of times and he went _crazy_. Oh yeah, what does ‘felching’ mean?”

“No idea. I’ll ask Rose, she knows all kinds of weird words. Come on, let’s get you back.”

* * *

A couple of weeks into term Dave made one of his rare appearances at my room.

“You’re not doing anything next weekend, are you, John? No? Excellent, we’re going to London.”

“No, Dave,” I said patiently, “I’m not doing anything next weekend, except for, ooh, three essays or so. Why are we going to London?”

He sank into a chair and ran a hand across his face. “I have to go to a party.”

“Poor baby.”

“Don’t even _attempt_ sarcasm, John, it’s like watching a toddler try to wield a katana. Just sit there and look derpy and adorable while I tell you about my horrible life.”

“You’re turning into Eridan.”

“Christ, I hope not, I think I’d kill myself. I realise your knowledge of the outside world extends for about five feet in every direction, but have you ever heard the name Feferi Peixes?”

Rather to my surprise, I had.

“She’s a highblood, isn’t she? Like, really high? Kind of third-in-line-to-the-Bloodthrone high?”

“Good God. You won’t be able to tell from my unwavering facial expression, but I am staggered. Twenty points to Gryffinderp. Yes, she’s pretty much as purple as they come, and she’s currently doing what all the real highbloods do, i.e. living in London and blowing absurd sums of money on a preposterously lavish lifestyle that benefits no-one but cocktail waiters and handbag manufacturers.”

“Thank goodness you’re working so hard for the good of humanity.”

“Oh, someone take it away from him before he cuts his little toesies off. Anyway, it’s her nine sweeps party next weekend, and I have to go, so you’re coming along to keep me sane.”

“Wouldn’t you be better off without me to embarrass you?” I said mildly, although in truth this sounded very exciting. I had only been to London once, to see the sights with my father.

“John, this entire party is going to be full of the thick, rich cream of troll idiocy. It will be wall-to-wall shrieking society heiresses who think I’m just _too_ impossibly daring and simmering ham-fisted Eridanesques who will be looking for any excuse to establish their superiority, up to and including punching me in the snout. If I am dropped defenceless into such a room I will have no option but to drink myself into a stupor, drop my trousers, and run arse-naked around Pall Mall until I’m shot by police snipers for recklessly causing public arousal. Compared to that, any minor embarrassment you can cause by accidentally addressing a marchioness as ‘your Lordship’ is as nothing.”

“Is ‘your Lordship’ not right for a marchioness?”

“A marchioness is a woman, John.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t think central London is quite ready for your butt,” I said, “so of course I’ll come along. Will there be anyone else we know?”

Dave looked thoughtful. “Eridan, for sure. He and Feferi go a long way back. Probably Vriska. Possibly Kanaya, although I think she’s a bit green for this crowd. Rose is invited, although I don’t know if she’ll come.”

“Well, why don’t we bring a group along?”

“How d’you mean?”

“Where’s this party happening?”

“Oh, she’s booked some club somewhere. Got the whole place, three floors, probably a free bar. Money’s no object for seadwellers.”

“So there’ll be loads of space. And no hostess wants her party to look under-attended. She’s not going to fuss if the legendary David Lalonde rocks up with his whole posse in tow, is she?”

“Please never use the word ‘posse’ ever again, except in the context of Latin grammar. But yes, you’re right. I imagine I can bring as many people as I like. You know, John, that’s a very good idea! Perhaps we can salvage this debacle yet.”

“I could invite Terezi,” I said, watching his face.

“Who? Oh – your tute partner,” he said dismissively. It was a bravura display, but if I had known Greek poetry as well as I knew the moods of Dave Lalonde, I would have been heading for the top First. “Yes, the more the merrier, I suppose.”

* * *

By the time we actually set off for London the following weekend, our group numbered half a dozen: Dave, me, Kanaya, Jade, Terezi, and Sollux. The latter was coming along on Terezi’s insistence; she had told him firmly that going to a party would be good for him, and after surprisingly little coaxing he had given in. I privately suspected that Terezi herself was nervous, and wanted a wingman who would be reliably on her side. Jade had needed no persuasion at all, and was the most excited of the six of us. Rose was making her own way there from Cambridge, and we would meet anyone else at the party itself.

I must admit I felt a surge of satisfaction as I walked straight up to the smoked glass and chrome doors of one of the most cutting-edge nightclubs in London, a place whose livery I’d only ever seen on the front of tabloid newspapers as one or other celebrity staggered out dishevelled and lit up by flashbulbs. Dave handed a square of embossed card to a troll doorman built like a house with another house on top.

“Lalonde,” he drawled, using the _rich idiot_ voice I’d once thought was his own. “They’re with me.”

The doorman nodded and pushed back the door with one meaty grey palm. “Have a nice night, folks.”

We’d barely made it past the lobby and into the club proper when a troll girl materialised in front of us with a piercing squeal.

“ _Dave!_ Oh my God, it’s been like a _hundred years_ , how _are_ you?!”

“Oh, at least,” he agreed, seemingly unperturbed by this dramatic apparition. “More like three hundred, I should think. Good to see you, Fef.”

They hugged, and I mulled over the realisation that it was our hostess, and therefore probably one of the richest and most powerful trolls in the entire United Kingdom, who was currently squeezing my best friend like a beloved cuddly toy.

“I was worried when Vriska and Eridan turned up by themselves that you weren’t coming!” she said, letting him go at last. “I’m _so_ glad you’re here, this party would have been un _bear_ able otherwise.”

I was watching her eyes. She had scanned us all quickly over his shoulder, taking in numbers and attributes, but was conspicuously not asking Dave _so who are your friends?_ I presumed this was bad form; if we were with Dave, we were okay, and to ask for details would seem like interrogation. It was up to him to introduce us, or not.

He did, of course, in cursory fashion, rattling through the girls, then Sollux, then me. I noticed he introduced Terezi first. I took the time to assess this seadweller princess. She was fairly small, although with more curves and fewer edges than Terezi, wearing a minidress that seemed to have been woven from iridescent scales which shifted colour and glimmered in the spotlights. Her hair was long and worn loose, and she had an impressive array of jewellery, especially bracelets. Her golden eyes were big and friendly, and she smiled a lot. She was very, very pretty. When Dave reached me in the introductions he said “John Egbert” and I said “hey” and she said “it’s so cool to meet you!” and she sounded like she meant it. And then she gave me an enormous grin which seemed similarly genuine; not at all the blank, practised smile of the hostess born. Either she was _incredibly_ good at what she did, or she really did just enjoy meeting new people. Possibly both.

I decided I liked Feferi Peixes.

* * *

My respect for her social graces only increased when she shepherded us all to a table off to one side of the main dancefloor, summoned a waiter to bring drinks, and then actually sat with us to talk, rather than shooting off at once to be seen elsewhere. I sipped my cocktail, which was something delicious and pineapple-based, and kept my head down and listened. Dave, clearly feeling he had a reputation to uphold, began to tell a string of increasingly preposterous anecdotes about past misdemeanours, most of which ended up with him being pursued by whistle-blowing policemen around some unlikely location – the penguin enclosure at a safari park, or an illegal rave in a cornfield near Ipswich (‘the trouble was, you see, everyone else had whistles too’). Each story sent Feferi into greater and more giggly transports of delight. I glanced at Terezi, worried that this lawless side of Dave might horrify her, but she was sitting with a lazy and knowing grin, stirring the ice-cubes in her drink with a mermaid on a plastic stick. Evidently she had already learnt to tell when Dave was playing a part, a skill it had taken me the best part of a year to master. I told myself ruefully that Terezi was faster than me at learning everything else; why should she not be faster at learning Dave?

After perhaps fifteen minutes of this, Feferi turned to glance over her shoulder and clicked her tongue with annoyance. I snapped out of studying the curve of her right ear, which had a geometric perfection bordering on the transcendental, and followed her gaze. She was staring into the centre of the club, where a large dancefloor, tiled in laminated blond wood and studded at artfully random intervals with tiny lights clearly intended to resemble gemstones, was set on a level a couple of steps down from the main floor. It was surrounded by low metal barriers designed in flowing and vaguely nautical shapes, and lit by an impressively high-tech array of shifting, dipping, and rotating spotlights, and it was entirely deserted. A DJ was hunched in his booth, busily projecting the image of performing very complicated and precise operations with a huge bank of dials and switches, and a heavy disco beat was booming through the club’s speakers; but the guests remained in knots and clumps around the periphery, standing by pillars or sitting at tables.

“Oh, man,” Feferi sighed in bewitching exasperation. “Nobody’s dancing! What a useless pack of sponges. Come on – ” she turned a pleading expression on us that made tearing my shirt off, leaping onto the table, and challenging every single other male in the building to a fight seem like a _really good idea_ for a second – “you guys’ll come and dance with me, won’t you?”

“Yeah, of course!” I said, downing the remains of my drink and standing up.

No-one else moved.

I turned to look at them all. “What, seriously? You don’t want to dance?”

“No,” said Kanaya.

“ _Fuck_ no,” said Sollux.

“Maybe in a minute!” said Jade shiftily.

“John realised with mounting concern that no-one else had _entered_ the Make An Utter Dick Of Yourself Olympics,” said Dave. “Still, at least that meant he was heading for a gold.”

Terezi’s cackles seemed to have taken control of her entire body. Her skinny shoulders shook with mirth.

Feferi stuck her tongue out. “ _Fine._ You’re all rubbish. John and I will go and show everyone how it’s done, and you’ll be sorry you didn’t get on board the Dance Train when it was leaving the station!”

“Yeah!” said Jade, giving me a double thumbs up but making no move to leave her seat. “Go John!”

“If that’s the Dance Train,” said Dave, “I think I’ll walk.”

Feferi pulled a face at him, grabbed my wrist firmly, and hauled me towards the dancefloor. I had to take a staggering double-step to avoid being yanked off my feet; she was prodigiously strong for such a small girl. I suspected she could have picked me up and carried me bodily if she’d wanted, possibly in one hand. Before I’d really had time to register how suddenly and completely this had spiralled out of control, I was dancing with a princess, picked out in a solo spotlight, in front of an audience made up of about a hundred highblood trolls I didn’t know and most of my best friends.

My brain plunged forty feet into a vat of ice-cold panic and exploded. For at least a second I was medically dead. In retrospect, this was probably the best thing that could have happened. Sensing a crucial void in the power structure, my limbs bravely attempted to form an interim government, and I managed to dance for most of [the first song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUs9YzY7t-8) in what was essentially a fugue state before basic concepts like shape and colour even began to reassert themselves on my consciousness. By the time I could process images again, Feferi was grinning happily at me, and none of the spectators around the edges of the dancefloor had the drawn, horrified expressions of bystanders at a car-crash, which suggested I must have been doing okay.

As the DJ faded skilfully from one song into the next I heard laughter and scuffling and Terezi appeared at my elbow. She had Sollux by his arm and Dave by the front of his shirt, and it was hard to determine which of the two looked more stoically appalled. The overall impression was somewhere between a police officer manhandling a couple of delinquent youths into the back of a riot van, and a harassed mother dragging her recalcitrant toddlers round Tesco.

“We decided we couldn’t just abandon you, John!” she shouted over the music.

“ _She_ fucking decided – ” began Dave, but then the beat kicked in properly and drowned any further protest. Evidently realising some battles weren’t worth fighting, he shut up and got on with it. I felt sorry for Sollux, who I suspected had never been on a dancefloor in his life, but he gamely managed a kind of hesitant bob and shuffle which was, if not what one might call exuberant, at least in time. Feferi and Terezi exchanged satisfied looks. I imagined they were both the kind of girls who could bond over breaking men to their will like horses.

This proved to be a tipping point; five people was enough to exert a specific gravity, and gradually little groups began to stumble down the steps as though by accident and then drift into loose orbits. Jade and Kanaya came down to join us as well, and within twenty minutes the dancefloor was sufficiently crowded that I no longer felt like John Travolta.

I noticed that the same peculiar force was acting on Dave and Terezi now as I had observed during their first meeting back in Trinity. When they had originally joined me on the floor, we had all danced in a kind of rough circle, as is the way of groups in clubs, facing into the centre. As the [latest song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lVDOda4L9Q) began, however, I saw that they were facing each other, and indeed showed very little sign of realising the rest of us were there at all. When she was small my sister had owned a pair of tiny coloured plastic ducks whose bodies concealed magnets; these were so aligned that if you put the ducks within a couple of inches of each other on a shelf or table, they slowly rotated inwards until they were beak-to-beak. Watching Dave and Terezi reminded me of nothing so much as those little red and blue ducks. It seemed that if you left them close enough together, they automatically ended up facing inwards, her narrow red glasses staring straight into his round dark ones.

I was really enjoying myself now I was no longer the object of scrutiny, but I was also hot and thirsty. I turned to see if there was much of a crowd around the bar, and saw with a jolt that Rose was there, sitting on a stool, elbow on the counter, one leg elegantly crossed over the other. She raised a hand and gave me a little finger-wave.

I tugged Feferi’s elbow to get her attention. “Be right back,” I shouted. “Just saw someone I know.”

She nodded and gave me a thumbs-up. I headed off towards the bar.

* * *

Rose regarded me coolly as I sat down on the stool along from hers and ordered a bottle of lager. She was wearing a black dress which came down almost to her knees and a silver pendant on a thin chain. The effect was smart but unostentatious, unlike most of the trolls in the room, who had clearly decked themselves in mating plumage.

“You seem to be very much the centre of attention this evening, John.”

I took a pull from my beer, which was so deliciously cold and crisp I had to fight the urge to down the whole thing in one, and laughed. “I guess so. That’s what I get for being stupid enough to dance on an empty floor.”

“I’m not sure it’s anything so pragmatic,” she said, and pursed her lips briefly around the slim black straw jutting up from her cocktail, her eyes never leaving mine. “Our hostess seems quite taken with you. I have to admit, it’s a smarter play than I’d have given you credit for. I must update my notes.”

I shifted on my stool, feeling suddenly uncertain, as though I’d walked blithely out onto a high bridge and got halfway across before noticing telltale cracks in the stonework and a big yellow sign at the other end.

“A smarter play?” I echoed faintly.

“Oh, don’t come the innocent with me, Egbert,” she murmured. “I’m onto your little game. One doesn’t dance with the prettiest girl at the party by _accident_. You’re trying to make me jealous, aren’t you?”

I tried to say something coherent but it came out as a gurgle. Around me chunks of concrete were splintering and crumbling away like sponge cake, plummeting into the torrent hundreds of feet below. A man in a reflective jacket was waving frantically from the far side and shouting something, but the wind snatched his words away.

“As I say, in the brief moments when my girlish brain isn’t fogged with venom and rage and crudely-drawn doodles of Feferi Peixes being devoured by alligators, I’m actually quite impressed. You’re not as subpar a tactician as I’d initially assumed.”

I finally managed to access my language centres. “Rose, no!” I burst out desperately. “It’s – it’s not like that at all! I didn’t – I mean, I wouldn’t – she just – I didn’t think – I was just trying to be friendly!”

Slowly, and with infinite grace and dignity, she raised her free hand and splayed it over her face. Then she lowered it again and looked at me with the expression of someone who has just watched a small child run head-first into a wall and fall over: trembling, tight-lipped sympathy that could at any second shatter into helpless laughter.

“John,” she said gently, “you are a miracle of science. You should be on disability benefits, or kept in a special institute, or something. They ought to give you extra time in exams. You literally have no sense at all for when you’re being teased, do you?”

I made some more choking noises, since it had proved a solid strategy thus far.

“Look,” she said, and inclined her head. “Someone’s trying to get your attention.”

I looked. On the other side of the dancefloor Feferi was waving eagerly, her smile effortlessly outshining the spotlights that swivelled and dipped over the space between.

“I, erm – I can stay here if you’d, I mean, that is, if you’d rather – ”

“ _Go,_ ” Rose said firmly, giving me a little push on the arm. “Go and dance with your princess. I shall simply sit here and simmer with quiet hatred, plotting my vengeance, which I have already decided will involve tarantulas and a speculum. Actually, perhaps the next time you see me I’ll be locked in horrible embrace with someone else, in a petty attempt to strike back at your unfeeling heart. Kanaya looks rather lonely, for instance.”

I finished my beer and stood up.

“Well, okay, but Rose, um. What you said. I don’t think Feferi’s the prettiest girl at the party. I mean, she’s very pretty. But you’re prettier.”

Rose stared at me, and I tried not to cringe physically away in anticipation. But then, to my utter astonishment, I saw her cheeks turn ever so slightly pink.

Something told me that I had pulled off a coup, and would be unwise to wait around for reprisals. I fled.

* * *

Halfway across the dancefloor I was intercepted by an outstretched arm, a sleeve of dark blue fabric ending in a grey hand with long fingers. I turned to follow it back past the shoulder. It belonged to Eridan.

“Hey, Eridan!” I said cheerfully.

“Egbert,” he hissed, “just wwhat the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?”

“Sorry?”

“I’vve been wwatching you. I saww you and Fef back there. _Dancing._ ”

I began to wonder just how much trouble it was possible to get into from a single dance. Perhaps I would set some sort of record, and be used as a caution to future generations. _Remember, children: be very careful at parties. Think of the story of poor John Egbert. He danced with a girl at a party, and an hour later he was outed as a paedophile, attacked by gorillas, and arrested for high treason._

“Uh, yes,” I confirmed, not really knowing what else to say, “we were dancing.”

“I knoww you wwere fuckin’ dancing! Wwhat I wwant to knoww is wwhat the fuck you think you’re _doing_? Havve you forgotten about the Miscegenation Act?”

This was such an utterly unexpected question that I could not help a snort of laughter. It was as though he’d suddenly asked me what I thought about government economic policy.

“Eridan, wow! The Miscegenation Act forbids _marriage_ between trolls and humans. I don’t think it covers _dancing!_ ”

“Don’t go all wwide-eyed and naivve wwith me, Egbert,” he spat. “It wwon’t wwash. You’re runnin’ flushed for her, aren’t you? Admit it.”

Some back office of my brain had been quietly compiling data on posture and body language all this time, and its analysts now saw fit to lodge a report with my consciousness that I might be about to find myself in my first ever fight.

“Eridan,” I said peaceably, “I’m really sorry if you got the wrong idea, but we honestly were just dancing. I mean, it wasn’t even, you know, _sexy_ dancing. If you ask Feferi I’m sure she’ll say the same.”

He did not look appeased. “Wwell, you’d better fuckin’ stop it, right noww. I don’t wwant to see you hangin’ round her again this evvening, understand? She’s too good for the likes of you.”

Grand demonstrative acts had never been my forte, but even to me this seemed a step too far, somehow.

“That’s just stupid. Sorry, Eridan. It’s a party, and I’m going to dance with whoever I like.”

And I pushed past his arm and strode away. He made no attempt to follow.

* * *

When I reached Feferi she handed me a drink, looking concerned.

“Was that Eridan? He wasn’t giving you a hard time, was he?”

“Um, well, sort of. But it’s fine. I’m not really sure what he was so cross about.”

She performed a sort of two-in-one eye-rolling hair-tossing gesture that raised the ambient temperature by at least a degree and a half. “Ugh! I’m sorry, he’s such a douche sometimes. We used to be moirails, but then he went flushed for me and everything got really confused and awful.”

“Sounds bad,” I said sympathetically.

“Yeah, it was,” she agreed, “but that was, like, eighteen months ago! It was before he even went to Oxford! I can’t understand why he’s not over it by now.”

I had a few theories about why a young man might fail to get over Feferi Peixes with any great display of alacrity, but I kept them to myself. She took my arm and led me towards the sofas in the corner.

“So anyway,” she said, leaning in close to whisper conspiratorially in my ear and very nearly crashing all my motor functions in the process, “tell me about your friend!”

“Er. Which one?”

“You know!” She bit her lip and jerked her head slightly toward the bar, where I could see Sollux perched on a stool talking to Jade. “The computer genius!”

“Oh! Sollux?”

“Yes! He’s _gorgeous_. So _intense_. How’s he off for quadrants, do you know?”

“Um, well, he’s been with a girl in college called Aradia for about a year now, so I guess she’s his matesprit?”

“Figures,” she said glumly. “The good ones are always taken or human.”

“And I’m fairly sure my friend Terezi is his moirail, although I have to admit I’ve never really understood moirallegiance all that well.”

She stared at me.

“John. What do you mean you don’t understand moirallegiance?”

“I know, it’s stupid, but humans don’t really have the whole – ”

“No, you retard!” she broke in excitedly. “That’s not what I mean! I mean, how do _you_ not understand moirallegiance? I’ve heard about you and Dave!”

“What?”

She threw back her head and unleashed a peal of musical giggles. “Come on, you two are like the _definition_ of moirails! If you were trolls we’d be throwing an OT-party to celebrate you both filling your quadrant so well!”

This was an entirely new perspective and it confused me.

“I don’t – erm, I don’t think – that is, I’d never thought – ”

“Well, what would _you_ call your relationship with him?” she demanded. “And don’t give me that ‘just good friends’ bullshit humans are so fond of. You guys use that line to wriggle out of everything.”

I began to wish I had stayed with Rose. As I floundered in the benighted and trackless swamp of my own feelings – why did girls always insist on _asking_ about this sort of thing? – help came from an entirely unexpected quarter.

“Hey, Peixes!” It was Vriska, in a dark blue vest top overlaid with fine black cobwebby mesh and a skirt that might better have been described as a belt with aspirations. “Can I borrow your human? I promise I won’t break him.”

“Vriska!” said Feferi, horrified. “That’s a dreadful way to talk about John!”

“What? He _is_ human, and he knows it! Aren’t you, John?”

“I – what?”

“See? Come on! I’ll bring him back in a bit, Peixes, honest.”

And she dragged me back onto the dancefloor. I entertained the faint hope that Rose actually _was_ wrapped round Kanaya and therefore wouldn’t be watching, but I didn’t think she’d been serious, and if I imagined her wrapped round anyone else my fists started clenching involuntarily, so I decided it was best to abandon that thought experiment entirely.

I had always enjoyed dancing with Vriska in the past – she was energetic and unselfconscious – but now I found it strangely uncomfortable. Had her movements always been this nakedly, aggressively sexual? Was I simply seeing through different eyes? Either way, as she ground and gyrated against me to the beat I found it almost impossible not to have distracting and unwelcome flashbacks. [The song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6-KdTIi_Ek), which I knew was one of her favourites, didn’t help. I was aroused, but it was a physical reaction and I was curiously ashamed of it; and I also felt exploited, in a way I could not explain even to myself. The treacherous thought bubbled through my skull that Vriska only came to me when she wanted a warm body to rub against, in one or other context. I was, essentially, a scratching-post who occasionally bought her drinks.

I could not take a second song. I felt hot and a little sick, and the cocktails I had been putting away since the start of the evening were beginning to remind my bloodstream who was in charge. I needed to sit down for a bit, somewhere cool and quiet, without people forcing themselves onto me or trying to start fights with me or asking me how I felt about things.

“Where are you going?” yelled Vriska over the thud of the bass.

“Bathroom,” I mouthed, jerking a thumb vaguely over my shoulder. Then I turned and staggered away, heading towards a doorway in an alcove that looked as if it might lead in the right direction. In fact it took me down some stairs and into a maze of passages floored with linoleum and lit by fluorescent tubes, which looked more like some kind of catering area or storage space than a part of the club itself. I wondered if I’d missed a Staff Only sign somewhere. At this point an attack of dizziness seized me. I leant on the nearest wall until the world stopped lurching around in circles. Recovering, I turned a corner largely at random, filled with drunken confidence that there must be a toilet down here _somewhere_ , and emerged into a long corridor stretching away towards a crimson-painted fire door plastered with green emergency decals. Halfway down this corridor, a couple were locked in squirming embrace.

I narrowed my eyes to focus through the haze. It was Dave and Terezi.

I had never seen two people quite so entirely lost in each other. I was standing in plain view at the end of a well-lit corridor and I might as well have been invisible. I had the impression that the building could have caught fire, the sprinklers could have come on, and everyone in the club could have stampeded down this passageway towards the emergency exit, and they would not have noticed a thing. Terezi had both legs wrapped around Dave’s hips, and he was leaning back with his shoulders against the wall, supporting her with his upper body and one arm, which he had slung under her like a cradle. The other arm came up around her back and between her jutting shoulder-blades, the fingers tangled in her hair. Her arms were twined around his neck, and they were kissing with the kind of inelegant, passionate savagery you rarely see in films or on the television, kissing as though the only point of the exercise were to get as nakedly, wetly _close_ to the other person as could be, and to Hell with how it looked. I noticed, with a kind of dull, disbelieving fascination, that Dave’s shades had been pushed up clear of his face; they nestled on top of his blond hair like one of the Alice bands Rose sometimes wore.

I felt blood rush to my face and thunder in my temples. They were only kissing, both fully clothed, but I could not have been more embarrassed if I’d walked in on them both at the moment of orgasm. They’d left the dancefloor and found their way down into the bowels of the club for a reason. It was not a kiss I, or anyone else, should have been watching.

I turned and quite literally ran. Down a corridor, across a junction, round a corner, through a pair of swing doors that bumped and flapped back in my wake, until I finally came to a panting, shaking halt at the foot of a flight of stairs – not the stairs I’d come down by, but it hardly mattered. I could hear the din of the party filtering down from above. Somewhere up there people might be wondering where I had gone: Vriska, Feferi, perhaps even Rose...

A tear was trickling down my cheek. I had no idea why. I sat on the bottom step, put my head between my hands, and tried not to feel anything for a little while.


	9. Mars

_tonight the high times finish  
tomorrow sends you both back to square one  
like a burning moth you kind of wish  
you could have settled down into a longer run  
and your silent eyes are crying  
that the daytime has already half begun  
the stars outshone in the east are dying  
of envy for the sun_

 _tonight your love is over  
tomorrow it will all be as you were  
like a captain broken in the field  
ce n'est pas magnifique, mais c'est la guerre  
and your silent eyes are crying  
that tomorrow is to be so very soon  
the silver coins in your pocket are sighing  
for envy of the moon_  
\- Pete Atkin & Clive James, ‘Tonight Your Love Is Over’

Hilary Term brought with it a much-anticipated event: the St Benedict’s College Ball, which was to take place on the Saturday evening before the start of full term. St Ben’s was a large college with plenty of space, and was also relatively rare in having its ball in Hilary; the summer was the great time for college balls, and there were a few that took place in late November to anticipate Christmas, but a January ball was one of a kind and attracted attention. There was no question as to whether I would go; not attending one’s own college ball would be rather akin to missing one’s own birthday party. Ticket sales opened to college members halfway through the previous term, and then to the rest of the University a week or so later, at which point competition would be fierce; however, each member of St Ben’s could purchase a single guest ticket along with their own if they so desired.

Back in Michaelmas, a day or so before internal tickets went on sale, I had gone to see Dave.

“Don’t suppose you fancy giving the St Ben’s ball a try this year? I hear it’s going to be pretty good.”

Dave had put down his newspaper and looked at me. The shades were impassive as ever, but the mouth twitched with sly amusement.

“Why, Egbert, you dark horse. Are you asking me to be your date for the evening?”

“No! Well, okay, yes, I suppose I am. But not like that. It’s just that I’ve got a guest ticket, and it seems silly to waste it.”

“ _Such_ a charmer. It’s no wonder you swept Feferi off her feet. Well, although I am of course deeply flattered by your offer, I must regretfully decline.”

“Oh,” I had said, feeling rather flat. It had not really occurred to me that Dave might not want to come. “Well, I mean, fair enough. Are you sure? It should be a laugh.”

“Quite sure,” he said solemnly. “Alas, my heart is another’s. I am already pledged.”

“You’re _what?_ ”

“John, John!” he cried, springing from his chair and falling to one knee. “I never meant to hurt you, you must understand that! But a man can only wait for so long, and she – she was _there_ for me.”

“Get up, you ass,” I said, feeling my face redden. “What are you talking about? Do you mean you’re going with someone else?”

He jumped neatly to his feet. “Think hard, John. _Who_ – in the entire of St Benedict’s College – might _also_ have found herself with a spare guest ticket, and might have been more – how shall I say this? – _forthright_ than you in making known her desire for the company of perhaps the most handsome, and certainly the coolest, undergraduate in Oxford?”

“Of course,” I said, suddenly feeling very stupid. “Terezi.”

“ _rem acu tetigisti,_ dear boy, as I am assured they said in ancient Rome!” I suddenly realised the source of his more than usually extravagant manner: he was _happy_. “Your Ms Pyrope has displayed her usual level of good taste and sound judgement, and you have been pipped to the post. You may touch my garments, if you wish, by way of a consolation prize.”

I laughed. “As long as you’re there, I don’t care whose guest you are. And I’m really pleased about Terezi.”

He fell back into his chair and regarded me thoughtfully. “Of course, John, this does not mean you should not tear up your guest ticket and scatter it, along with your fondest hopes, to the pitiless winds.”

“Oh? Do you reckon someone else might want it?”

He stared at me.

I stared back at him.

He stared at me some more.

“What?” I protested.

He gave vent to an exaggerated theatrical sigh and buried his face in his hands for a moment. When he looked up, he said, “I have a sister.”

“Wh – _Rose?_ Do – do you think she’d like to come?”

“I can categorically state, off the record of course, that were a young Oxford undergraduate with idiotic floppy hair and a ridiculous goofy expression like a kitten watching a fireworks show to ask my sister to some sort of fancy formal revelry at his college, compelling her to buy a new dress and do all the things to her hair and face that she spends so much time pretending she thinks are stupid, she would regard this development with unalloyed gratification. She wouldn’t put it as briefly and straightforwardly as that, but you get the gist.”

“Gosh,” I said.

“Gosh indeed,” he replied. “And John, one suggestion, if I may? When you write to my sister, try not to phrase it as ‘I have this stupid ticket I need to get rid of’, alright? Good man.”

* * *

As I was leaving Dave’s room and heading back across quad, someone called my name and Vriska bounded up, grinning widely.

“Heeeeeeeey, John! I guess _someone_ ’s got a guest ticket to the St Ben’s ball, huh? Pretty hot property, those things!”

My stomach lurched. This was a complication that had not even occurred to me.

“Oh, er, Vriska! I – I’m afraid I’ve actually, uh, already offered my ticket to someone.”

She stared at me.

“What, seriously?”

“Y-yeah. It didn’t – I mean, I guess I thought you wouldn’t want to come.”

“John, are you insane? It’s the only decent ball this term! _Everyone_ wants to get their hands on one of those tickets!”

“Oh, wow. I’m really sorry, I just didn’t think it would be your kind of thing.” To my utter horror, she looked genuinely crestfallen. I scrambled to reassure her. “But, I mean, I know lots of people in college, I’m sure I can get one for you if you want one!”

That did the trick. She bridled, and fixed me with a characteristic glare. “John, please. Don’t be absurd. Do you _know_ how many friends I have at St Ben’s?”

“A – a lot of friends?”

“Yes! A Hell of a lot of friends! They’ll be _queueing_ up to get me a ticket. You were just the first schmuck I happened to bump into, that’s all.”

“Well, good! So – I’ll see you at the ball, then?”

“Damn straight you will! Look for me. I’ll be the one in the _best dress ever._ ”

I laughed. “Okay! That’s great news. I have to run, I’ve got a tute, but I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “I’m a busy girl, John.”

I set off towards the gates at double speed, feeling I’d dodged a bullet.

* * *

Thus it was that, on the Saturday before the start of Hilary Term in my second year, I took Rose Lalonde to the ball.

I met her at the gates of St Aloysius’, where she’d borrowed Dave’s room for getting ready. She was wearing a dark purple strapless dress with a sort of corset-like top half above a layered floor-length cascade of frilled skirts, and carrying a small purple clutch bag. She looked, for the first time since I’d known her, very slightly nervous, and she was unquestionably the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life.

I swallowed. “Rose, you look incredible.”

She went a little pink. “Thank you, John. I must say you look rather smart yourself.”

Personally I thought the hire tailcoat was slightly too big, but I hoped it wasn’t obvious. I gave her my arm and we walked down to the front of college, where we met up with Dave and Terezi. Dave, like me, had opted for full white tie, although his was tailored rather than hired and it showed; he looked exquisite, like the models in the publicity for expensive menswear boutiques. He was still wearing the shades. Terezi was resplendent in a bizarre frilly concoction swirled with variegated colour: red figured predominantly, but blue, green, purple and even orange were all in the mix somewhere. I wondered whether she’d picked it out herself. No-one else could possibly have pulled it off, but her grin was so broad, and the glee suffusing every inch of her petite frame so evident, that she positively glowed. She had foregone her cane; I presumed Dave was standing in for the evening.

He gave us an ironic slow hand-clap as we approached. “Will wonders never cease? For a black-hearted harridan and an idiot who can’t normally find his own face, the two of you clean up pretty well.” Rose smiled sweetly and raised a slender middle digit.

“Rose,” I said, “this is my friend Terezi Pyrope. You were both at Feferi’s party last term, but I’m not sure you actually met? Terezi, this is my, uh, friend Rose Lalonde.”

Rose leant in smoothly to kiss her on the cheek.

“Mmm, you smell delicious,” said Terezi wonderingly.

Far from being wrongfooted by this unusual compliment, Rose looked genuinely pleased. “Thank you very much, Terezi. So do you.”

“Oh God, the nostril party begins,” said Dave, and led the way into college.

As it turned out, everyone was there. The first people we met were Sollux and Aradia, the latter of whom was something of a revelation; having only ever seen her in the baggy hooded sweatshirt and jeans she wore everywhere around Oxford, I’d had no idea of the figure she was hiding under them until I saw her in a crimson ballgown with a plunging neckline and a slit most of the way up one thigh. Rose and Terezi had to handle the small-talk for a few seconds while Dave and I wrestled our brains back online. Sollux just looked quietly smug. I saw Equius from a distance, in a tailcoat that was visibly straining at the seams: the frosty, senatorial gaze he tried to turn on me when he noticed my companions was somewhat undermined by the small excitable catgirl hanging onto his arm, who was practically jumping up and down with enthusiasm and waving eagerly at me. Nepeta had actually topped off her cornflower blue dress with a pair of cat ears on a headband. I waved back and tried not to laugh.

In the champagne tent we encountered another friendly face.

“Kanaya!” said Rose joyfully, and the two of them executed a flawless 2x facekiss combo. “You look _stunning_ – where on Earth did you find that dress?”

“I made it myself,” said Kanaya a little shyly. I was impressed; she wouldn’t have looked out of place on the red carpet at a film premiere. “I’m glad you like it. Have you seen Karkat and, uh, his date?”

I turned, following her outstretched arm, and saw Karkat a little way away. He was immaculate in black tie, but looked distinctly uncomfortable about the fact, and one hand kept coming up nervously to fiddle with his wing collar. The other hand had been annexed by a human girl in a dark green off-the-shoulder gown, long dark hair tumbled down her back, who was smiling radiantly as she accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter. I stared. It was Jade.

Karkat saw me looking and physically staggered, as though I’d hit him with a well-aimed rock. Jade looked round in surprise, caught sight of our group, and hauled him merrily over.

“Oh my God, you guys all look amazing! Wow, John, is that white tie? You should have got the hat too! Terezi, your dress is – um – really cool!”

“Isn’t it just?” said Terezi happily.

“That dress is probably the least cool thing there has ever been or will ever be,” said Dave. “And I include John, the sum totality of John, in that statement.”

“I will bite you, you know.”

“Later, baby, later.”

“Looking sharp, Karkat,” I said.

“Uh, thanks. Hey, Egbert, can I talk to you for a second?”

I let him usher me a little way away from the others into a secluded corner. He looked nervous.

“Listen, man, are you okay with all this?”

“With what?”

“With _this,_ you moron,” he hissed. “With me and Jade. I swear, I didn’t know ‘til just now that she hadn’t fucking told you. I didn’t mean – ”

“Karkat,” I cut him off, “it’s fine! Honestly, I know you guys don’t have brothers and sisters because of your weird slime genetics – ”

“ – oh nice, dickwad, real fucking culturally sensitive – ”

“ – _but_ I think you’ve got the wrong idea. Jade’s nineteen, she can do what she likes! As long as you don’t hurt her or make her cry or anything – ”

“ – fuck, Egbert, I would _never_ – ”

“ – I know, I know! We’re cool, Karkat. Just make sure you look after her, okay? It’s none of my business if my sister has terrible taste in men.”

“...Thanks, John. I appreciate it. That’s really – hey, hang on, fuck _you_ – ”

I gave him a cheery wave and rejoined the others. Kanaya raised an eyebrow. “Was that Karkat finally making his move?”

“What?”

“Oh. Er, sorry. Forget I said anything.”

* * *

The first act in the main tent was some Canadian superstar DJ, who Dave reluctantly admitted ‘knew her stuff’. The name meant nothing to me, although Rose said it was something to do with astronomy. A David Guetta song had come on, and Terezi had dragged a wearily resigned Dave off to dance, so Rose and I went for a stroll through college to take stock of the various attractions. As we entered the cloisters surrounding West Quad, we turned and nearly bumped straight into another couple coming in the opposite direction. I apologised hastily, and then realised I was face-to-face with Vriska and Eridan. She looked glamorous if lethal in an eye-popping dark blue dress; he was done up to the nines in the most elaborate white tie I’d seen yet, complete with top hat, silk scarf, ivory-handled cane, and even a gold watch-chain stretching across from his waistcoat pocket. On Dave it would have looked awe-inspiring, but Eridan didn’t quite have the confidence to carry it: he looked too puffed up, too obviously proud of himself, and as a result it had the appearance of a costume for a play more than anything.

“Oh, hey, guys!” I said.

“Hello, John,” said Vriska, and her eyes narrowed fractionally. “Hello, Rose.”

“Good evening, Vriska,” said Rose politely. “Count Ampora.”

There was an awkward silence. Then the two of them swept magisterially past us and on their way.

“Well,” said Rose reflectively, “he looks like a complete idiot.”

I said nothing, feeling obscurely guilty of a sudden.

* * *

For the next couple of hours I tried to put Vriska out of my mind and get on with enjoying the ball. College had done itself proud: there were three separate dance tents catering for different genres of music, stalls distributing all manner of food and drink, a string quartet, swing-boats, even dodgems. I was particularly fascinated by the roaming conjurors, who made their way along queues distracting guests with simple but beautifully-performed magic tricks. As Karkat and I staggered sweatily off the stage on which we had spent two minutes pummelling each other with inflatable mallets, Kanaya glided up, looking concerned.

“John,” she said in an undertone, laying a hand on my arm. “I just saw Vriska heading off into the gardens by herself.”

“Is she alright?”

“I’m not sure. It looked like she was crying.”

“Oh, man,” I said. “That may be my fault. I’d better go and talk to her. Can you keep Rose company for a bit? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She nodded and I hurried away.

Vriska was nowhere to be seen in the section of the gardens that had been co-opted for stalls and entertainments. To find her I had to duck past a security guard in a reflective jacket and under some red-and-white tape to reach the dark and secluded area by the duck-pond, which was off-limits because of the spring bulbs planted there. She was sitting on a bench in the furthest corner, hunched up, arms folded on her knees, staring at the ground. As I walked towards her I felt the light and heat and noise of the ball recede behind me as though I were leaving a building and trudging out into the trackless night.

She looked up when I got within six paces. She wasn’t crying, but a darkness around her eyes that had nothing to do with shadow suggested she might have been.

“Oh, great,” she said. “I guess we can add privacy to the list of things you suck at understanding. It’s a long list, John!”

I said nothing and sat down on the bench a little way from her.

There was a pause. I stared back towards the conflagration of yellow and red across the lawn and beyond the trees, hearing shouts, laughter.

“I’m sorry I didn’t invite you to the ball, Vriska,” I said quietly.

“I didn’t need you to!” she snapped.

“No, but you kind of wanted me to.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m here. Whoopee.”

She looked back down at the ground. I waited to see if she was going to say anything else. When she didn’t, I said, “Are you and Eridan together now, then?”

She snorted. “Oh, please. He just wouldn’t stop whinging about how he couldn’t get a date. So pathetic. I went with him to shut him up.”

I looked at the palms of my hands. “Vriska, I thought you wanted to be my friend.”

She wheeled on me, eyes blazing like yellow lamps in the darkness of the garden. “Yes, John,” she said venomously, “that’s why I _slept_ with you. Traditional sign of pale feelings. Well done.”

My mouth began to form an apology all of its own, but was cut off by the swell from somewhere deep inside of an anger I hadn’t even known I carried. “Well,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, “good job you made it so straightforward, then. Disappearing before I woke up? Leaving me a vaguely patronising note? Treating the whole thing like it was some crazy naked self-defence class and you were my drill sergeant? I mean, how on Earth did I manage to miss _those_ obvious signals of romantic interest? Derp derp, silly John! And then not contacting me _at all_ for the next _three months,_ that was the perfect touch. You know the first time I saw you after that night was Dave’s party at the start of Michaelmas? It’s all about keeping them interested, right? Don’t want things to get too cosy!”

She seemed to crumple in on herself, like I’d hit her in the gut.

“You may be hot stuff at sexy sex, Vriska,” I said, “but I don’t think you’re much cop at romance.”

“I was scared,” she said softly. “I thought when you woke up you’d hate me. You’d been drunk, and I’d pushed you too far, and I was sure you’d say it had been a mistake and I’d taken advantage. And then you might never have wanted to see me again.”

“If it was a mistake it was at least as much my fault as yours. I mean, I seem to remember getting involved at one or two points, when you let me.”

She giggled, sniffed, and dragged the back of one hand across her eyes.

“I don’t hate you!” I said. “That would be stupid. You’re my friend. I guess I just... didn’t realise what you were trying to do.”

There was a long silence between us. The heavy disco bass from one of the tents seemed to make the moonlit grass quiver at our feet. A burst of distant cheers greeted the arrival of some new song.

“So you’re with Rose now?” she said.

“I don’t see how you can assume that. I mean, if you’re not with Eridan – ”

“John,” she said wearily, “give me a break. Are you with Rose now?”

“...No. Not really.”

“But you’d like to be?”

“Yes.”

She thought about this for a few seconds, and then stood up decisively.

“I’m heading back. Thanks for... yeah. Can I give you one piece of advice?”

“Of course.”

“You want to ditch Rose Lalonde as soon as you can. She’s bad news.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The stuff people say about her... man. I mean, okay, I’m a bitch, but she’s _serious_ trouble. You never wondered why she has no friends at Cambridge? She’s a heartbreaker, John. A real ice queen, they say. She likes to get her hooks into little boys like you, drag them along for a bit, and then smash them on the rocks and laugh in the wreckage. Supposedly one guy killed himself when she stopped taking his ‘phone calls. Jumped off the top of a car park. And then there’s the stories about her and Dave. You’re way out of your depth with her, and there’s sharks in the water. Get out while you can, find someone nice. You deserve better than _her._ ”

Before I could even begin to formulate a reply to this astonishing statement, she was gone, dress swishing and gravel scrunching under high-heeled shoes as she stalked away towards the tents.

* * *

I sat on the bench by myself for a little, collecting my thoughts, and then wandered back. When I reached the nearest marquee, which was a general seating area laid out with small cafe-style tables and chairs for people who’d got tired of dancing, I stepped inside to see if I could find Dave, or Rose, or anyone. In fact I walked straight into the middle of an even worse situation than the one I’d left.

Some sort of altercation was taking place in the centre of the tent. Every head in the room had swivelled inwards to stare, and a few people were on their feet to get a better view. Stepping round a tall girl in a black dress to get a decent sight-line, I saw, rather to my surprise, Eridan. He was sitting on the slatted wooden floor of the marquee, his arms propped out behind him, one knee raised, in a manner suggestive of complete astonishment. He was looking up at someone or something, and an additional side-step on my part revealed this to be Sollux Captor.

“What the Hell, man?”, Sollux was shouting. He looked genuinely furious. “What the fuck d’you think you’re doing talking to her like that?”

Sensing big trouble, I muttered apologies and pushed my way hastily between the tables. As I came closer more of the scene was revealed: Aradia in a chair looking frightened, Kanaya standing next to her with a hand on her shoulder, Terezi a little behind Sollux, tense and expressionless.

Eridan picked himself slowly up off the ground and began an elaborate pantomime of dusting himself off. His top hat had fallen off and rolled a short way away. His cane was leaning against an adjacent table.

“Howw _dare_ you – ” he began.

“How dare _I?_ ” roared Sollux. Terezi had told me once that he had a temper, but I’d never seen it on display before. His glasses flashed and he looked genuinely alarming. “I’m not the one thliming all over girlth I hardly know! When a girl tellth you the doethn’t want to talk to you, it meanth the _doethn’t want to talk to you,_ you _prick!_ Did they not teach you that at Highblood Academy?”

“You filthy piece of blood trash,” Eridan growled, snatching up his cane. “You need to learn howw to talk to your betters. I’vve a good mind to beat the shit out of you right here, so your little whore can wwatch.”

“Try me, motherfucker,” said Sollux, and took a step forward. His face was sallow with rage and he was a good two inches taller than Eridan, and his tux jacket seemed to give him a crucial extra solidity and breadth across the shoulders. Fighting him, at least to me, did not look like a terribly bright idea.

Eridan clearly thought so too. He stepped back and bent with painstaking dignity to retrieve his hat, which he jammed firmly onto his head. Then he did something I did not understand. He pinched at the middle finger on his left hand with the thumb and forefinger of his right, tugged, and deliberately drew off one fine white silk glove. He held this in front of him for a second, and then threw it hard to the floor at Sollux’ feet.

A ripple of gasps and even a couple of small screams passed round the room.

“Monday morning,” he said. “Port Meadoww. Make sure you bring _her_ along. I wwouldn’t wwant her to miss a second.”

Then he turned and stormed out of the marquee, the crowd clearing a path for him as he went.

There was a moment of utter silence, and then a babble of anxious and excited voices surged up to fill the gap. I fought my way to the centre, where Aradia was hugging Sollux desperately.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“John!” said Terezi. “Did you see that?”

“Most of it, yeah, but I don’t understand. What happened?”

“Eridan came over and started hitting on Aradia,” explained Kanaya. “I mean, properly hitting on her, not just flirting. I think he’s perhaps had too much to drink. He had an arm round her and he kept trying to kiss her neck.”

“Aradia freaked out,” put in Terezi, “understandably! I was just about to go and tell him where to shove his stupid cane when Sollux came back with drinks, saw Eridan, and flipped. Put him straight on the floor with one punch.” There was a definite note of satisfaction, even pride, to her voice. I had trouble myself not grinning at the idea of Sollux the mild-mannered computer geek landing a haymaker on a member of the troll haematocracy, even if I had a nasty suspicion I could see where this was going.

“That may not have been the wisest tactical decision,” said a girl’s voice behind me. I turned to see Rose and Dave, both carrying fresh glasses of wine and looking worried. I brushed aside a treacherous crackle of doubt.

Dave walked forward and crouched down to pick up the fallen glove. “Formal challenge. My God. What an absolute arsehole.”

“I’m confused,” I said.

“The glove means Eridan has challenged Sollux to a duel of honour,” Kanaya said. “It’ll be at dawn, the traditional time, on Monday.”

“Like, a proper duel with swords?” I said, disbelievingly. Kanaya nodded.

My head spun. I had known that duels of honour, although illegal among humans for nearly a century, were still technically permitted under troll law. In fact, I remembered a case in the newspapers a couple of years back where the troll Finance Minister had challenged a political opponent after some insulting remarks were made in Parliament, and had been seriously wounded as a result. But I had always assumed that a duel was a significant event, reserved for causes rather more weighty than an argument over a girl.

“Can he do that?”

“Of course he _can,_ ” said Dave, standing up. “Any troll over eight sweeps can legally challenge another at any time and on any pretext. It’s just that normally no-one actually bothers, because the whole thing’s ridiculous.”

“So back out.”

“No chanthe,” said Sollux fiercely, detaching himself from Aradia.

“Failure to turn up to a duel would... not be well received,” Rose said.

“Well, who cares? Sollux, what if you get hurt or something?”

“Then I get hurt. You can’t back out of a duel. I might ath well jutht hang mythelf and be done with it. I can’t believe he theriouthly did that.”

“Don’t worry,” said Dave. “Eridan’s not a fighter. If you turn up and look like you actually intend to fight, he’ll probably cancel the whole thing. Do you know how to handle a sword?”

“Not really. I didn’t go to that kind of thcool.”

“It’s alright. I know a couple of tricks, I can show you tomorrow. Just try and enjoy the rest of the evening, both of you. Trust me; when he wakes up tomorrow morning Eridan’s going to be pitifully desperate for a way to get out of this with his skin intact. Seadwellers like to keep their blood on the inside.”

“Okay. Thankth, man, I apprethiate it.”

* * *

When the crowd had dispersed and Sollux and Aradia had headed off elsewhere, I was left with Rose, Dave, and Terezi.

“Do you actually think Eridan will call it off?” I asked.

Dave looked grim. “No. He can’t afford to. Cancelling a duel before any blows are struck would be even more humiliating than not turning up. And Eridan’s going into politics, where that sort of thing actually matters. If word got out that he called off a duel with a blood inferior, no-one would ever take him seriously again. His career would be over before it even started.”

Terezi and Rose both nodded as if this all made perfect sense. I felt sick.

“So what do we do?”

“I try and teach Sollux enough swordplay that he can survive long enough for one of them to get a hit in. It doesn’t matter who. Once blood’s been drawn, the duel can end with no loss of honour to either party. First blood counts as a victory. Sollux won’t even look bad if he loses, because he’s so far below Eridan on the spectrum that it’s not a fair fight.”

“What if he hits Eridan?”

“Well, that would be hilarious,” admitted Dave, “but it’s not likely to happen. Highbloods are taught to duel as soon as they can walk. All Sollux needs to do is not walk into any killing strikes. A slice taken out of his thigh won’t do him any harm long-term, and it’s a lot better than the alternative.”

* * *

Monday morning seemed to come round much too fast. The shrill of my alarm dragged me from a strange dream about vast oceans of black, oily water and endless dark corridors full of abandoned computer equipment. Seven a.m. The sky outside was a dull indigo, beginning to lighten to blue-grey at one edge. I hauled myself into jeans, T-shirt, actual shirt, thick woollen jumper, coat, and gloves, and set out across quad. Even bundled up the wind snapped at my ankles and stung my eyes.

Within half an hour I was crunching across the frosty grass of Port Meadow, shivering. Ahead, silhouetted against the mists rising off the river, I saw two small knots of people standing a little distance apart. One of these knots proved to contain Eridan, Vriska, and three or four other trolls I didn’t know, although at least two of them looked like seadwellers. The second contained Sollux, Aradia, Terezi, and Karkat.

“Hey, Karkat!” I said, striving to keep my voice as normal and cheerful as possible, as though I had simply met him while out for an early morning walk. “Didn’t expect to see _you_ here.”

He turned a face drawn with worry towards me. “Of course I’m here, you fucking idiot,” he muttered. “Sol and I went to school together. He – he was my best friend.”

I had not known this. As I tried to think of something to say, Terezi approached.

“John, I’m glad you’re here. Sollux says he’d be honoured if you’d be his second.”

“Um – I don’t know what that is.”

Karkat groaned. “Jesus Christ. The second is the guy who steps in to fight if the main guy defaults – runs away, or doesn’t turn up, or something.”

“Can I do that? Duelling’s not legal for humans, even against trolls.” I couldn’t bring myself to mention the fact that I barely knew which end of a sword to hold. It seemed churlish, in the circumstances.

“No,” said Terezi. “That’s the point. It’s a gesture – sort of a fuck-you to Eridan. If Sollux quit, you wouldn’t actually be able to fight, because you’re legally barred. In other words, it makes clear that Sollux has no intention of quitting. It’s the next best thing to turning up with no second at all, which is against the rules. Also, Eridan will probably be kind of pissed off that a human’s getting involved in his duel.”

“Then please tell Sollux that nothing could do me greater honour,” I said. Terezi smirked, gave me a little mock-bow, and headed back to Sollux, who was standing by a tree looking pale but determined. Slung round his waist was a sword-belt holding an ornate duelling sword – a beautiful piece of work with a simple basket guard of looped silver wrapped round a bright red hilt. I suspected it wasn’t his, and further suspected I knew whose it was.

I heard crunching on the grass behind us and turned to see Dave and Rose approaching. I had assumed Dave would be there, but had not realised Rose would stay up as well. She was well wrapped up in a purple scarf that looked hand-knitted and a matching pair of mittens. Dave was wearing a black military-style greatcoat which swung open over a red shirt and black jeans. He must have been freezing, but he didn’t show it. In one hand he held a steaming polystyrene cup of takeaway coffee.

“No Kanaya?” I asked.

Rose shook her head. “She couldn’t face it.”

I understood. I was increasingly unsure as to whether _I_ could face it.

Sollux came over to us.

“Well, it’th been nice knowing you guyth,” he said dryly.

Dave clapped him roughly on the shoulder. “Don’t be stupid. Just keep your guard up like I showed you, stay at a distance, and don’t try anything big or fancy. Ampora’s not a killer, all he’s trying to do is scrape back some dignity after you laid that right hook on him, which, incidentally, I gather was like something by Brunelleschi. If you get hit, make it look worse than it is. Fall down, kick up a fuss. That way he walks away looking like the big man and you walk away full stop.”

Sollux nodded. “I got it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to thtart trying to be Troll Antonio Banderath at thith thtage.”

“Good luck,” I said.

“Cheerth. Thee you in the pub, eh?”

He turned and strode back to the appointed line. We stood in a huddle at a decent distance. If the duelling ground had been a clock face, Sollux and Eridan were standing at 9 and 3 o’clock respectively. We were at about 7, and Vriska and the highbloods opposite us at 1. As second, I stood a little further forward than the rest, ready to move if need be.

There was an awkward silence, broken only by birds chirping in the trees around us, greeting the dawn. A duel this minor and unofficial had no referee; it was up to the seconds to watch out for foul play and rush in if something went wrong. No-one knew how to start. I felt a foolish urge to laugh.

“Whenever you’re ready,” said Sollux, sounding exasperated.

Eridan shot him a glare. Then he turned to face the eastern horizon, drew his sword slowly from its sheath – a long, narrow blade which glowed in the pink light of sunrise – held it vertically in front of his face and kissed the hilt.

Sollux drew his own blade with considerably less ceremony. They faced each other. Aradia gave an almost inaudible whimper of fear.

The fight started before I had really registered it. Eridan crossed the ground in two or three loping strides and struck, then struck again – whipping lateral cuts at Sollux’ face and upper body. Sollux, visibly surprised, nevertheless blocked them both with his blade upright. The _cling_ of the metal was higher and more musical than I had been expecting, more like cutlery at dinner than the great meaty clangs and crashes of a cinematic battlefield. The third strike was a quick jab, which he avoided simply by stepping back and away. Eridan stepped back too and waited.

“Good,” muttered Dave at my elbow. “The best defence is always getting the fuck out the way. Can’t hit you if you’re not there.”

There were a couple more indecisive flickers of steel, and then Eridan seemed to see an opening and lunged. Sollux yelped and staggered back, his free hand clutching instinctively at his ribs. His opponent whirled a half-circle and held up his blade at arm’s length so that we could all see the trickle of mustard yellow running down from its point. First blood. The highbloods broke into a polite patter of applause, like the audience at a piano recital.

On Sunday afternoon I had made Rose explain the rules of duelling to me in detail, three times. The fight could now, in theory, end. All that was required for victory was the drawing of blood. A merciful challenger would now call a halt and depart in triumph, honour intact, having proved he was the better swordsman. This was also the smart thing to do, since any pragmatic fighter knew that just because you had landed the first hit didn’t mean your opponent wouldn’t land the second, and the second might be a lot worse. Rose had done some clicking around and told me that over sixty percent of duels fought in the last century had ended in this way. But I knew Eridan was not smart, and I had no great hopes that he would be merciful. Plus, he had more to lose than Sollux. To turn his back on an opponent who was bleeding but still obviously in the game was not a resounding victory, and a resounding victory was what he needed to salve his wounded pride.

I was right. Eridan withdrew a few paces, kissed the hilt, and turned to face Sollux again.

The next thirty seconds were nightmarish. Sollux played a straight bat and did his best, but Eridan was much, much better. It was not just his skill with the sword: he was _fast,_ horribly fast, and agile with it. Sollux ventured a few strikes, but it was like me trying to catch fish in my bare hands. Everyone said that highbloods were simply much more physically adept than the lower castes, which was how the spectrum had come to be arranged in the first place, but I had never seen quite so clear a demonstration of the fact. I remembered a drunken evening in Dave’s room, the two of us watching some awful 1980s B-movie about ninjas in which the badly-choreographed fight scenes had all been sped up slightly for playback, so that the combatants seemed to possess supernatural reflexes. It looked as though someone had done the same here, only unfortunately they’d forgotten to apply the process to Sollux, leaving him stuck with the sluggish and uncertain movements of an ordinary mortal. After one slicing cut which he dodged by perhaps half an inch, hurling himself bodily out of the way of the blade and nearly toppling to the ground in the process, I heard Dave suck in breath. “Fuck me,” he said, so quietly only I could hear it. “Ampora’s _good._ ”

All at once it was over. Eridan struck like a darting eel, and Sollux grunted, staggered, and stumbled backwards onto the grass. He lay sprawled, propping himself up on one arm, the other hand against his belly, and I could see blood – a lot of it – bubbling out between his clenched fingers and soaking into his shirt. He lifted his head to stare up at his opponent through red and blue lenses. Eridan stood over him for a second, indecisive, the sword visibly wavering in his hand.

Then he struck again, downwards, and Sollux went limp.

Aradia screamed – a high, wordless howl of pure physical pain – and collapsed to her knees, clutching at her head with both hands. Terezi made a noise somewhere between a snarl and a sob. I started forwards on automatic. Eridan turned to stare at us, stained blade in hand, eyes wild with uncomprehending triumph.

“You piece of _shit_ – ”

Karkat flung himself past me, heading straight for Eridan, who stood watching him come.

“ _John!_ ” roared Dave.

I had not been a sportsman, but once, one far-off Sports Day, I had won a silver medal for my House in the 100m sprint. I sprang off the blocks now in a start that would have had my old games teacher slack-jawed with amazement, reached Karkat before he’d closed half the distance, and tackled him physically to the ground. Then I slithered awkwardly on top of him and pinned him down.

“Karkat, no – he’s a highblood, you can’t take him – ”

“I – don’t – fucking – care – Egbert, get _off_ me – ”

His muscles under the black jersey were wire and elastic; all spring, no strength. And he didn’t really want to fight me. He lashed at my sides with his skinny arms until I grabbed his wrists, one in each hand, and slammed them into the dirt. He gave one last convulsive shudder and then went slack. Resistance gone, I fell on him like a lover, my face in the gap between his neck and shoulder. I felt his chest heave as he started to cry.

“I’d shoot the dog, Lalonde,” I hear Eridan say from somewhere above me. “He’s rabid.”

I waited until I was sure Karkat was staying down, and then levered myself to my feet. With my weight lifted he rolled onto his side and curled into a foetal ball, sobbing as though his heart would break, red tears trickling from beneath eyelids squeezed tight shut. Eridan was leaving, surrounded by his henchmen. Only Vriska looked back, and her eyes found mine. At the time, drunk with grief and hate and horror, I could find nothing in her glance but pity: _sorry, John. Guess you weren’t cut out to be a winner after all._ Today I no longer know what I saw.

The scene behind me looked like nothing so much as the end of a play. Sollux lay motionless, shades staring up at the sky, yellow blood smoking off the frozen grass around him. On either side of him knelt Aradia and Terezi, one keening with sorrow, the other terribly silent. Dave had an arm around Rose, who had buried her face in his shoulder.

I stood, numb, too miserable to speak or think or cry, and watched the sun come up.


	10. Vulcan

_CHORUS.  
Blest, they are the truly blest who all their lives  
have never tasted devastation. For others, once  
the gods have rocked a house to its foundations  
the ruin will never cease, cresting on and on  
from one generation on throughout the race –  
like a great mounting tide  
driven on by savage northern gales,  
surging over the dead black depths  
roiling up from the bottom dark heaves of sand  
and the headlands, taking the storm’s onslaught full-force,  
roar, and the low moaning  
echoes on and on  
and now  
as in ancient times I see the sorrows of the house,  
the living heirs of the old ancestral kings,  
piling on the sorrows of the dead  
and one generation cannot free the next –  
some god will bring them crashing down,  
the race finds no release._  
\- Sophocles, _Antigone_ 583-99, tr. Robert Fagles

The strangest thing about the death of Sollux Captor, at least from my point of view, was how little it seemed to matter. It made page 2 of the student newspaper that Thursday, after a story about some antianthropic remarks made by the troll President of one of the university’s larger societies at a black tie dinner. The troll in question was claiming that his words were being taken out of context; several other prominent figures in the society were calling him a racist and demanding his resignation. Then, on the next page, St Benedict’s Student Killed In Duel: a dry, factual account, with photos of both Sollux and Eridan and an accompanying fact-box summarising the history of duelling at Oxford. ‘Count Ampora,’ readers were told, ‘is believed to have challenged Mr Captor following an argument at the St Benedict’s Ball over fellow student Aradia Megido. ‘I didn’t catch the details,’ said one witness who preferred to remain nameless, ‘but it was clear they were both very angry’.’ The overall tone of the article was one of delicate sorrow that matters had necessitated such a regrettable outcome. Nothing to suggest that Eridan had overreacted; nothing to suggest that the whole thing had been a sick and pointless exercise in shoring up a damaged reputation; nothing to say that Sollux should not have died.

One of the various student magazines, which had a predominantly human editorial staff and was known for its left-leaning political stance, ran an article called ‘The Price of Honour’, arguing that duelling was ‘murder hallowed by tradition’, a ‘barbarous Mediaevalism’ that had ‘no place in the Oxford, or the England, of today’. A few people went and left flowers under the tree on Port Meadow. The thing I found worst of all was the _Gazette,_ the University’s official publication, a no-frills document which existed simply to record factual details such as new academic appointments and prizes won in examinations. In its section ‘Recent Deaths of University Members’, halfway down the column, just under a distinguished alumnus who had died at thirty-four sweeps after a long struggle with cancer, there was an entry:

 _CAPTOR, Sollux (St Benedict’s, Computer Science). Died Jan 22nd, aged 9 sweeps. Slain in honourable combat by Count Eridan Ampora (St Aloysius’, Modern History)._

And that was all. ‘Slain in honourable combat’. For all the world as though the two of them had met like knights on some ancient battlefield, like Hector and Achilles, and fought to the last drop of blood.

Of all of us I think it hit Terezi hardest; harder, in a funny way, even than Aradia. Terezi had seen her best friend murdered, and it had been _legal_. There had been no foul play. No Legislacerator could have built a case from it. Eridan’s decision to strike a killing blow had been savage and unnecessary, but quite within the rules of duelling, and duelling was a practice sanctioned by the law. For a girl like Terezi, who believed passionately in the law as an instrument of justice, to watch so obvious and callous a murder filed away under ‘Unfortunate Accidents’ must have been nigh unbearable.

There was no funeral. Sollux had never been adopted; he had gone straight from the Nursery to boarding school to Oxford, state-funded all the way, without ever being taken into a family. As such, there were no guardians to pay for burial rites, and since funerals were a human custom, orphan trolls were not entitled to them at the state’s expense. The body was taken away in an ambulance, incinerated without ceremony at the state crematorium, and the ashes were presented to Aradia in a small grey plastic jar. I have no idea what she did with them. I never dared to ask. I believe Lord Dualscar sent her a bouquet of flowers in the post; for her loss. Apparently it was considered the polite thing to do.

We all felt that there needed to be something to mark Sollux’ death, that we could not simply go about our lives under the collective pretence that nothing had happened. Dave offered to hold a wake. No-one had a better idea, so on the evening of the Monday one week after the duel, we all gathered in Dave’s rooms: me, Terezi, Karkat, Kanaya, Rose, and even Jade, who had only met Sollux twice but was evidently distraught about the whole thing and insisted on attending. It was a sorry occasion. Aradia turned up for a little while, but she looked like a ghost; her eyes were vast and empty, and her grey skin seemed almost translucent with grief. She sat quietly and drank a glass of wine while we made awkward conversation around her, and then thanked us all very much for being so kind but said she would go to bed. Kanaya walked her back to college.

Ten minutes after the two of them had left, there was a heavy double knock, and then before anyone could move or speak the door swung open with a crash and there stood Eridan. He was wearing full troll ceremonial dress: military uniform, blood insignia in silver pinned to his left breast on a purple ribbon, violet epaulettes, silver piping, shiny black boots. His duelling sword was buckled at his hip. I guessed he’d been at some sort of highblood dinner or dance, events at which no costume was deemed too preposterously formal. He looked drunk, but not too drunk to be dangerous.

He swivelled his head to scan the room slowly. No-one spoke.

“Christ almighty,” he said in tones of mock horror. “Who died?”

Karkat made an inarticulate noise, Terezi hissed like a snake, but Dave was on his feet faster than either of them.

“Eridan,” he said quietly, “get the fuck out.”

Eridan widened his eyes as if in fear, and then took two slow, deliberate steps over the threshold and into the room. In the doorway behind him I saw Vriska in another of her sharp-edged asymmetric ballgowns. She looked tense, reluctant. I sensed this had not been her idea.

“Wwasn’t evven _in_ , before, Lalonde,” he said. “I am noww, though.”

He did another exaggerated scan of the assembled company. “Good God. Two humans, a blind girl, and a rustblood. It’s like you’re runnin’ some kind of _charity_ in here. Aren’t you wworried you’ll catch something?”

“Count Ampora,” said Rose tightly, “this is a private function, and you were not invited. You’d do well to remember your manners.”

Eridan’s face twisted. “Evvening, Rose. Didn’t knoww you wwere in towwn. These Vvane Quad rooms are awwfully draughty. Good of you to come up and keep your brother wwarm at night.”

“Eridan,” said Dave again, and there was something in his voice this time that I had never heard before, “if you take another step into this room, I swear to God and all His angels I will kill you where you stand.”

For half a second the seadweller looked genuinely astonished, and then he recovered and threw his head back in a braying laugh.

“Oh, _Davvid_. Don’t embarrass yourself, dear boy. You don’t evven havve your sword.”

Dave moved faster than I had thought possible, almost faster than I could see. In a single motion he lunged forward and down, snatched up an empty wine bottle off the coffee-table, and struck it on the edge with a sharp crack like ice splintering on a lake. When he straightened up he had in his hand just the neck and upper half of the bottle, fringed with wicked teeth of green glass that sparkled in the light of the standard-lamp.

“Don’t need it,” he said softly.

Eridan’s hand had flown to his sword-hilt the instant Dave moved, but by the time the glass fangs were level with his belly he’d only managed to clear six inches of the blade from its scabbard. He stopped dead, scowling, eyes narrowed.

There was a long and terrible silence. They stood opposite each other, the boy and the troll, red and white and gold facing black and grey and violet, both perfectly still, both waiting. The air in the room seemed to clench like a fist with the will to do harm. My breaths felt shallow and insubstantial, as though I were at some impossible altitude, fighting for oxygen. I risked a quick glance left and right. Jade was huddled back in her chair, terrified. Karkat was halfway out of his seat, hands clenched on the arm-rests, twitching with some personal cocktail of fear, anger, and doubt. Terezi looked hungry, Vriska uncertain. Rose was a poised and perfect blank. She might have been watching a commercial for dog biscuits.

“You havven’t got it in you to kill a man,” said Eridan scornfully.

“Pretty sure I’ve got it in me to gut a fish,” Dave replied.

I judged distances in my head. Sitting near the door, I could probably reach Eridan before anyone else. He was drawing from his left hip, and I was to the left, so it would be a simple matter to grab both his arms and physically prevent him from freeing his blade. Unless he was too strong. But that still left a lot of unknowns. I’d be wide open to attack from Vriska, for starters. Once the idea of Vriska trying to hurt me would have seemed ridiculous. Now, I thought she might relish the chance. And even if I blocked Eridan’s draw, there was no guarantee it would defuse the situation; Dave might strike anyway, or Karkat might attempt another of his wild lunges, and as for what tricks Terezi might have up her sleeve...

For a dreadful half-second I had the strange feeling that it was all down to me: that it was a puzzle I had to solve, like one of Doc Scratch’s textual conundrums, and that if I could just find the right thing to say, choose the right card to play, everyone would relax and smile and no-one else would have to die. In fact, of course, I was irrelevant. Eridan gave a little snort, and jammed his sword petulantly back into its sheath. Then he spat deliberately on the carpet.

“If you _wwant_ to die, Lalonde,” he said, “by all means make it official. ‘Til then, I guess I’ll see you around.”

And he turned his back on us and left, not bothering to close the door behind him.

Something punctured almost audibly. Karkat swore and struck his fist angrily on the arm of his chair. Jade gave a shaky little laugh. Dave dropped back into his seat as though a string had been cut, still holding tightly onto the vicious stump of the wine-bottle. Rose, without saying a word, knelt down by his feet and started to pick slices of glass carefully off the carpet, extracting each one like an archaeologist plucking potsherds from ancient dirt and placing it neatly on the table to wobble and glitter in the light. I dropped down as well to help her.

“You should have killed him,” said Karkat, in a voice that sounded oddly choked up.

“Karkat!” cried Jade, horrified.

“Wouldn’t solve anything,” said Dave briefly. His face was unreadable. He made no move to let go of the bottle.

* * *

I left about an hour later, and to my great surprise Rose asked if she could walk me back to my room.

We wandered together across Vane Quad and out through the main gates. It was barely midnight, but both the college and the streets beyond were strangely quiet and empty. As a town populated largely by students, Oxford has always stayed up late; walk through most colleges at two or even three o’clock in the morning and you will see windows still lit, hear voices and music floating down from high above, bump into little knots of people staggering back from parties or talking softly in doorways. That night, as we walked up Cornmarket past the homeless rustbloods huddled in shop doorways against the cold, the puddles like glass throwing back each change of the traffic lights – red pausing on amber, then back to green – the air was unnaturally still. It felt as though the city had made a collective pact to huddle under the covers and wait for morning.

When we’d been walking for a couple of minutes, I could take the silence no longer. I swallowed and said, “What did Eridan mean, Rose? About keeping your brother warm at night?”

She said nothing for a few more steps. Then, “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

“That... doesn’t really answer my question.”

She sighed. “No. You have to understand, John, Dave and I had a rather unusual childhood. When we were growing up, it was always our older brother on whom Mother lavished attention. She paid very little heed to us at all.”

“Older brother?” I echoed, caught completely off-guard. Not once, in over a year, had Dave ever mentioned having a brother. Even during the fortnight I spent at Strider’s Edge, I had seen no evidence of his existence.

“Yes. Dave and I are twins, as you know, but we have – had – a brother who was several years older. He was a half-brother, really, from Father’s previous marriage; no blood relation to Mother at all. But she loved him quite as much as if he’d been her own. Far more than she loved her own children, in fact. There were rumours that she... loved him a little _too_ much.”

I felt like an explorer who sticks a spade at random in the ground and unearths a whole city, or one of those fictional private eyes, hired to investigate some routine matter of financial dishonesty or suspected infidelity, who discovers a vast and improbable network of corruption and conspiracy. I had no idea which lead to follow first. I decided it was best just to let her keep talking.

“My first real memory of home is of Mother sweeping out the front door in one of her silly little Parisian raincoats, taking Brother off in the Porsche to his riding lesson, leaving the servants to look after me and Dave. We must have been three. Brother would have been about twelve. Mother spent all her time with him; he was her golden boy, her prodigy. Nothing was too good for him. Dave and I were like expensive Christmas presents someone buys you that you don’t really want; you keep them in a cupboard most of the time, and just get them out to show visitors.”

I felt the need to clarify. “She... didn’t really keep you in a cupboard, right?”

That got a tiny smile. “Yes, but thankfully before long our invitations arrived to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. No. We had a very comfortable life – opulent, even – but it was a somewhat... _neglected_ one. Our first day at school, Mother didn’t even take us in the car herself. She had one of the servants drop us off at the front door.”

“Where was your Dad?”

“Gone,” she said. “Away. He left while Dave and I were still very small. He and his mistress moved to Vienna, I believe. I barely remember him, except as a big looming figure in a greatcoat who frightened me. Cara, his mistress, wrote to Mother a couple of years ago to say that he’d died of heart failure.”

“I’m... sorry?”

She laughed out loud. “Don’t worry, John. You’re very sweet, but the news had the grand emotional impact of an electricity bill. In all but the most technical sense I never _had_ a father.”

“But doesn’t that mean the house – ”

“Oh no, it was nothing so formal. He never actually _divorced_ Mother; in the eyes of the law, and apparently of God, she was his wife until the day he died. He didn’t care about the house, or the lands, or any of that. She was always the one who enjoyed the trappings, and so he let her have them. He, I think, just wanted to be happy, in his own peculiar way.”

She sounded almost admiring. I decided this was too big for me to understand at the moment and put it carefully to one side.

“So what happened? How come I’ve never heard about your brother before?”

“He died,” she said simply. “Or, at least, we think he died. He went to Oxford just like Dave, but he played the game right to the top, made quite a name for himself. By the time he left he’d got First Class Honours in PPE, he’d been President of the Union, he’d rowed for his college’s Men’s First boat and won Blades; all the classic alpha-male boxes ticked. Oxford’s stupidest and most curvaceous blondes fell out of their dresses to snare his wandering gaze. Everyone said _this is a young man to watch_. Mother used to wander round the house in a perpetual cloud of self-satisfied maternal pride. She could never shut up about Brother’s latest glorious achievement. I’m sure she was already picturing the banners on the _Lalonde for First Minister_ campaign trail. I just used to find it rather silly, but it’s different for boys, and I think she hurt Dave in ways he still doesn’t really understand.”

Another wall crumbled under my pickaxe to reveal dark passages beyond. I had never been able to fathom Dave’s total and contemptuous rejection of traditional Oxford pursuits like sport, debating, and student politics, particularly as I suspected he would have been very good at any or all of them. If pressed he would simply say wearily that they were ‘so _obvious_ ’.

“The year after Oxford he went off for six months abroad with a group of friends – highblood trolls, mostly. They were going to build schools for disabled children in the Congo or repair rope bridges across llama-haunted canyons in the Andes or some such egotistical rite of passage; you know, one of these acts of conspicuous Victorian benevolence designed to scream _I may be absurdly rich and privileged and good-looking, but dammit I care about the little people too_. Standard stuff. While he was out there, he fell fifteen hundred feet off the side of a volcano. His body was never found.”

“That’s awful!”

“Mm. It was in the papers, though there’s no reason you’d have read it. We were thirteen at the time. Anyway, Mother was... well, while I deplore the modern rhetoric of emotion, I feel _devastated_ is in this case justified.”

“I can imagine,” I said, as we crossed the road.

“That’s when her drinking problem really started. Since the day we heard the news I’ve almost never seen her without martini glass in hand. But after nearly a year of wearing nothing but black, weeping ostentatiously on chaises-longues, having dizzy spells, refusing to get out of bed for days on end, leaving vases of fresh-cut lilies on every windowsill in the house, and generally behaving in the most preposterously melodramatic fashion imaginable, she got a grip and decided she still had two perfectly good cards left in her hand.”

“You and Dave.”

“Me and Dave. Unfortunately she’d left it a little late to start taking a serious interest in our wellbeing. She tried her best to mould us into Brother’s replacements, but it never really took. Dave fought her openly, refused to do more or less anything she wanted him to do; he very nearly turned down his place at Oxford just to spite her. I think he only applied for Classics because she said it was a waste of time. If she said ‘jump’ he’d lie down flat on the floor. I was a bit more subtle. Eventually we settled into a pattern where I pretended to be a devoted daughter, and she pretended to be a loving mother, and we both just went on finding new ways to needle each other.”

I pushed open the St Benedict’s night-gate to let her past me into quad. “So the whole thing about you and Dave – ”

“The two of us were always very close as children. We had to be; it was that or go insane. We used to be left alone together for days on end, pretty much, and we’d make up all these ridiculous games and stories to keep ourselves amused. I remember we had one game where we were the only two people left on a sort of doomed dystopian future Earth – I’d just read _On The Beach_ , I think – and he would save me from monsters.” Her voice went far-off for a moment, carried away from me by the past. “When we got older, and started going to parties and spending time with people like Feferi and Eridan, largely through Mother’s machinations, we were very much a unit. We’d turn up together, sit together; leave together. And so rumours began to spread.”

“Just because a couple of twins spent a lot of time together?” I said, a little skeptical. “That seems kind of a leap. I mean, Jade and I were pretty close growing up, but no-one ever suggested we were – you know.”

“Our friends were nastier than yours,” she said wryly. “But to be honest, there were a lot of things in play. Our social circles were troll-dominated, and the troll concept of incest is learnt, not inherited – they have to be taught it like we have to be taught about kismesis, so they’re more inclined to misread signs and jump to conclusions. Then there were the stories about Mother; there was certainly a kind of house-of-Oedipus flavour to the whole notion, the parent’s sins repeated in the children. But that wasn’t the biggest problem.”

We had come to the door of my room. I looked at her. She bit her lip and looked away.

“I played up to it, John. Have you – I don’t suppose you’ve ever wanted to be difficult, have you? Even when you were sixteen and your body was a chemical nightmare, you probably just went on being nice to everyone. I wish I’d had that strength. When I was sixteen I wanted to be different. I wanted people to look at me as if I had a fanged maw and tentacles. I revelled in being misunderstood, or I thought I did. The prospect of conversations freezing up and failing when I entered the room filled me with horrid adolescent glee. Once I realised what people were saying about me and Dave, it was simple enough to fuel the fires. A lingering look here and there. Sitting just that fraction too close to him at parties. Kissing him on the lips and not the cheek when I said goodbye. Child’s play, quite literally.”

“How did Dave take it?”

“Not well. At the time I didn’t even think about him; I was too amused by my delightful scheme. I just assumed that because he’d always been so strong and so quick and so clever, he could take anything I dished out. But a teenage boy’s two weakest spots are his pride and his libido, and I should have known that. It must have been Hell for him; aged seventeen, which for a man is a state of more or less perpetual arousal anyway, going to all these parties and meeting all these beautiful girls, and the only scantily-clad young thing rubbing herself against you is your sister. To me it was a game like all our other games, but I think it did a lot of damage. I was a horrible little bitch, John, I really was. I kicked over half the furniture in my twin brother’s head just so people would look at me funny.”

She looked more miserable than I had ever seen her, almost ready to cry. “So _that_ ’s what you were doing the first time I saw you,” I said, “at Strider’s Edge. When you came in and kissed Dave right in front of me. You were trying to scare me off.”

“Actually,” she said, “quite the reverse. I was trying to get your attention.”

“Come again?”

“You fascinated me, John. My brother doesn’t _let_ people close to him. In nineteen years of his life he’d never once had a friend but me. Oh, he’s always had cronies – he’s got that gift which means people just follow him around, whether they want to or not, look at Karkat – but I’d never heard him talk about anyone the way he talked about you when he came home that first Christmas. It was all _John and I did this_ and _John would love that_ and _John said the other, he’s such an idiot_. I was jealous, and intrigued. I had to meet you for myself, find out what on Earth it was he saw in you that he’d never seen in anyone else.”

“And have you? Found out, I mean?”

She looked into my eyes, and reached a hand up to push a stray lock of hair away from my temple and smooth it down above my ear.

“Yes,” she said quietly, sounding almost as surprised as I felt. “Yes, I have.”

There was a silence between us.

“Look,” I said, gesturing helplessly with one hand, “d’you want to come in for a coffee, or something?”

She smiled. “Not tonight. I’d be poor company. But ask me again next time.” Then she leant up and kissed me on the cheek, the way she had when I’d left her at the train station all those months ago. “Goodnight, John.”

I stood at the door and watched her walk away across the quad towards the shadows of the main gate. Silhouetted in the deep blue rectangle of the open night-gate, she turned and waved.

* * *

The rest of that term passed strangely. My most urgent worry was Moderations, the notoriously punishing and widely feared set of exams sat by Oxford Classicists at the end of their fifth term. I found myself with a lot of work to do, and alarmingly little time in which to do it. Terezi more or less disappeared from mortal ken; she would arrive outside a library as its doors opened and not leave her desk until the staff came round to chase her out with brooms and mops at the end of the night, and would then head straight back to her room and carry on working there. I saw her only by accident, bumping into her as she returned to college with her arms full of books or having awkward whispered conversations with her in the library stacks. More surprisingly, Dave became nearly as elusive. I had assumed he would treat Mods with the flippancy he had showed in the face of all previous academic endeavour, and that my problem would lie, as always, in convincing him to leave me alone long enough for me to get any work done. As it turned out, we went for a couple of trips to the pub, and one drive out into the country for Sunday lunch in the middle of February, and that was it. He neither turned up at my room nor pestered me with E-mails. And yet I never seemed to see him in the library either.

My great companion for the term, in fact, was Rose. She continued in her habit of visiting Oxford nearly every weekend, but in the absence of any parties, she took to spending the time with me. At first I worried this would hole my revision below the waterline more comprehensively than even Dave could have managed, but it quickly became clear that Rose was happy to let me work, and indeed even encouraged me to do so. A routine developed whereby she would come up to Oxford on Saturday evening, and we would have dinner and go out to the cinema or to a concert. My second-year rooms were again a pair, a small bedroom and a more spacious living room, and despite my protests and inept attempts at chivalry Rose insisted on sleeping on the latter’s sofa, which she claimed was more comfortable than her bed in Cambridge anyway. On Sunday, when the libraries were mostly closed, we would simply sit together in my room and work; me at my desk, her in the armchair by the window. Often she would ask me what I was doing, and her skilful questioning exposed all sorts of gaps and flaws in my knowledge which I was then able to go back and repair. Then she would take a train back to Cambridge late on Sunday afternoon or early in the evening.

I looked forward to these weekends enormously. In Rose’s presence I found a new kind of happiness; not the bright overpowering sweetness and intensity of the previous summer, but a quieter, almost domestic ease and satisfaction. We went well together – better than I would ever have expected when I first saw her, all poise and edge and untouchable glamour, in the vast tiled hall of Strider’s Edge. There was no doubt that she could be distracting: sometimes I would sit foolishly for minutes on end just watching her as she moved round the room making tea. She would return from the shower in her dressing-gown, belted at the waist, one side falling slightly open to expose a plane of pale flesh beneath her collar-bone curving subtly down into shadow, bare feet scrunching on my carpet, and would vanish into my bedroom to get dressed, closing the door behind her; and I would sit breathing carefully, unable to tear my eyes away from its blank white wooden panels. But overall her nearness was a comfort. I got used to whole new sides of her: Rose first thing in the morning, flushed and sleepy, blinking under tousled blonde hair; Rose hunched up in my armchair, some huge old book spread open on her knees, a picture of Zen concentration, lost to the world; Rose at my washbasin, leaning forward with her lips slightly parted to stare into the mirror while she teased a mascara brush along her pale eyelashes.

One Sunday halfway through term, a fortnight before the start of Mods, I received an invitation to morning coffee with Doc Scratch. I decided the best thing was simply to take Rose along.

We arrived in his study and he greeted us both, if not warmly – warmth had never been his strong point – then at least cordially. He was an excellent host. We sat in armchairs while he poured strong black coffee from a cafetière into small white cups as fine as eggshells. On an end-table within reach was a large white hemispherical bowl filled to the brim with little sugared biscuits scarcely bigger than postage-stamps. I looked and noticed they had all been cut into the shapes of card symbols: hearts and diamonds, spades and clubs.

“These are cute!” I said.

He looked up from the coffee and laughed. “Yes, they are rather enchanting, aren’t they? I bought them at the Frankfurt Christmas Market last year. The Germans call them _Kartekuchen_. Do help yourselves.”

I reached over and picked a heart off the top of the bowl.

“There’s a tradition,” he continued slyly, “that the first shape one picks from a new packet tells one’s fortune for the coming year.”

I looked at the little heart in the palm of my hand, then across at Rose. “I hope not,” she said lightly. “I’ve got a spade. That’s death, isn’t it?”

Scratch came over and handed her a coffee-cup on its gold-rimmed saucer. “Well, that’s one interpretation,” he said. “But of course card symbolism has a long and complex history. The spade, after all, is descended from the sword, which was traditionally the symbol of masculinity and potency. And in troll culture the four suits stand for entirely different things again, as a result of their adoption to denote the notorious four quadrants which give human sociologists such terrible headaches.”

“That’s right, isn’t it?” said Rose thoughtfully. “About the sword, I mean. I’d forgotten that. Clubs were originally rods, diamonds were coins, and hearts were, what – ”

“Cups, or chalices,” Scratch supplied. “Femininity, receptivity, and fertility. The physical equivalences are rather more obvious in the archaic version, as one might expect.”

“But this wasn’t a fair test,” I objected, trying to sound like Terezi, “because you’ve put them out in a bowl, not a packet, so we can see what we’re picking.”

“Which takes the exercise outside the realm of fortune-telling,” said Scratch smoothly, “and into the _far_ more stimulating domain of psychological analysis.” He shot me a look under his craggy white eyebrows. I popped the heart quickly into my mouth and crunched.

“Now, John,” he said, settling back in his desk chair, “how about some proper introductions?”

“Oh, sorry. This is my friend Rose Lalonde; she does Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge. Rose, this is my tutor, Doc- ” – I just managed not to say _Scratch_ – “-tor Callum Sassacre.”

“Delighted,” he said.

“It’s an honour,” she replied. “I’ve read your book on the metaphysics of literature. I can honestly say it was a revelation.”

He looked very pleased. “Oh, _The Fifth Wall_! Goodness, it’s rare to find an undergraduate who’s read _that_. It’s increasingly rare to find _anyone_ who’s read it, of course. I’m afraid it’s terribly theoretical in parts.”

“Yes, I can’t pretend I understood every word,” she said, “but on the whole I thought it was astonishingly clear-sighted and very provocative. I don’t know why it hasn’t spawned more debate. I was particularly fascinated by your theories on the way the figure of the omniscient narrator is fundamentally incompatible with the linearity of narrative, and how temporal contiguity is an unavoidable symptom of – ”

I sank a little further into my armchair, munched resignedly on a club, and reflected that my role in life was to introduce people I knew to each other so that they could have conversations I didn’t understand.

* * *

An account of my exams would be both tedious and unedifying. It is enough to say that when the results emerged, I turned out to have done well. Not spectacularly so – not enough to secure a First – but enough for a solid middle-of-the-road Upper Second, the classic result which makes all concerned nod their heads in satisfaction and then forget you exist. I put a lot of this success down to Rose’s subtle but incisive tuition over the previous few weeks. Terezi had chalked up a devastating performance, and gained the top First in the year, a near-mythic achievement; Scratch told me later in confidence that her answer to the question ‘Is there any such thing as justice in Sophocles’ _Antigone_?’ had been the best exam essay he’d read in thirty years. Dave, rather to my astonishment, scraped a 2.1 as well, his high marks in the literature papers making up for his rather lacklustre scores in grammar and composition. I wondered whether perhaps he had gained as much benefit from spending time with Terezi as I had from my weekends with Rose.

After the final paper we all went out to celebrate: Dave and Terezi, Rose and I, and Jade and Karkat for good measure. The three of us who’d sat the exams were too drained for anything very high-spirited, so we went out to an Italian restaurant in the city centre. Looking back now it is hard not to see that evening as a brief and tantalising glimpse of what might have been. We sat there in a circle with candles between us, working our way through three bottles of red wine, laughing at Karkat’s attempts to eat a calzone that was fractionally bigger than his own head. We talked about films, and books, and holidays we had taken or hoped to take. Terezi’s wicked little teeth snapped through huge slices of _quattro stagione_ pizza with mesmerising efficiency. Rose twirled spaghetti neatly around her fork like a native. Dave speculated about the conversations of our fellow restaurant-goers until Jade got the giggles and choked on sparkling water. When we were all warm and sleepy and content with food and drink, we drifted back to Dave’s room, where at my insistence we settled down with glasses of port to watch _Con Air_ on DVD: Dave in his usual armchair, protesting just enough to save face about both the quality of the movie and the way Terezi was perched happily in his lap (‘it’s like cuddling a fucking shuriken’); Jade and Karkat squabbling for control of a sofa that was easily big enough to hold three of them; me on the bed, knees up, back against the wall, and Rose’s head resting on my shoulder. When Cameron Poe finally presented his daughter with the bunny we all cheered, even Dave.

It was past midnight when Rose and I arrived back at St Benedict’s. I was exhausted, and light-headed with freedom, and somewhat the worse for wear after splitting the remains of the port with Dave. My room was dark and quiet and striped with pale moonlight; my books and notes still lay in a shadowy jumble over every available surface. I closed the door behind us and fumbled for the lightswitch.

“Oh, shit, where’s the stupid thing _gone_ – ”

“John,” said Rose gently. I turned to look at her. “Don’t bother.”

Kissing her felt like coming home.

* * *

Afterwards, as she lay warm in the crook of my arm, I stared up at the ceiling and said dreamily, “Do you know the story of Actaeon?”

“Tell me the story of Actaeon,” she said.

“He was out hunting in the forest one day,” I said, “when he turned the wrong corner and stumbled into a clearing where Artemis was having her bath. He tried to back away, but it was too late; he’d seen the goddess naked. So she changed him into a stag, and his own dogs turned on him and tore him to shreds.”

She kissed my shoulder. “Don’t worry, John,” she said, snuggling a little deeper. “I’ve always been more of a cat person, myself.”


	11. Neptune

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry for the lengthy delay in getting this posted. It's a long chapter, and with only two more to come I wanted to spend some time checking the whole thing and making sure it's watertight and I know what I'm doing. You shouldn't have to wait as long for the final two chapters, I hope.)

_Le dernier acte est sanglant, quelque belle que soit la comédie en tout le reste._  
(The last act is bloody, however charming the rest of the play may be.)  
\- Blaise Pascal, _Pensées_ iii.210

I had only been back in college for a couple of days after the Easter vacation when I answered the door and discovered Terezi. Disconcertingly, and for almost the first time I could remember, she was not smiling.

“Hey, come on in!”

“No thank you, John, I’m in a hurry. I actually just came round to ask you a favour.”

“Oh, okay. Go ahead.”

She looked a little uncomfortable. “Will you come with me somewhere?”

“Yeah, sure! Where are we going?”

“I can’t tell you.”

I stared at her and tried for a laugh, though it fell badly short.

“Wow. This sounds kind of serious all of a sudden.”

She sighed. “I’m afraid so. I understand if you can’t help, but there’s really no-one else I can ask. I need you to follow me somewhere and not ask me any questions.”

“What else do I have to do?”

“Nothing. I just need a partner. I’ll do this on my own if I have to, but... I’d rather not.”

“Terezi, you’re starting to scare me a bit. Are you sure you don’t want to talk about this? Or wouldn’t you rather have Dave along?”

She shook her head. “There’s no point talking about it. And Dave’s no use for this, he might do something stupid. It’s you or no-one. Sorry, John.”

“Then it’s me,” I said. “Hang on while I put some shoes on.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. She still did not smile.

* * *

We left college and set off at a ferocious pace through the shopping streets of central Oxford. Terezi said nothing, and I made no attempt at conversation. Her manner did not invite it. She tore through the milling crowds of tourists and school parties and mid-morning shoppers like a small grey fighter plane through banks of drifting cloud; I stayed in her wake as much as I could, muttering the occasional apology to an affronted granny, trying not to dwell on the ironies of relying on a blind girl as my navigator.

When we reached the gates of St Aloysius we turned inside. For a ghastly moment it flashed on me that she had come to break things off with Dave, and wanted me along as an arbitrator; but as quickly I realised that such a scenario would make nonsense of her earlier comments. Besides, we were heading away and to the right, instead of straight on towards Dave’s staircase.

Another minute’s walk brought us to an arch halfway along a covered passage I didn’t remember seeing before. There was a name-board on the wall nearby, and as Terezi plunged without hesitation through the arch and up the stairs beyond I snatched a glance at it. One name stood out like technicolour: E. AMPORA.

“Terezi,” I hissed, “what the Hell are we doing?”

She reached a door and turned to look back sadly at me.

“Sorry, John,” she said again.

Then she reached out and rapped twice on the wood.

I heard some scuffling in the room beyond, and then the door opened and Eridan stood there in a high collared shirt, skinny hipster jeans, and bare feet. He looked suspicious when he saw Terezi, and then downright baffled when he noticed me.

“Wwhat do _you_ wwant?”

“Count Ampora,” began Terezi in what sounded like carefully neutral tones, “I’m not sure we’ve ever been formally introduced. My name is Terezi Pyrope. I think you know my friend John Egbert. Can we come inside?”

He hesitated, then held the door open. “Sure.”

The room beyond, as I had rather expected, was grand and opulent and furnished in the best possible taste. Eridan closed the door behind us and crossed to stand by what I assumed was his usual chair, but he made no move to sit down, nor to offer us seats.

“Wwhat’s this about? Social call?” he said, heavy with the rather self-conscious irony he sometimes liked to deploy.

To my surprise, though no-one could possibly have called the comment funny, Terezi grinned. It wasn’t an altogether nice grin. I’d seen her use it on me once or twice when we’d been arguing in the bar about literature or philosophy and I’d walked straight into one of her carefully-baited traps. It always reminded me of Doc Scratch a little too much for comfort.

“Not as such, no. Count Ampora, have you ever heard of methylotelchine?”

The word meant absolutely nothing to me, but it clearly did something to Eridan, whose poker face had always been abysmal. He blinked several times and shifted weight.

“Can’t say that I havve.”

“Oh?” Terezi sounded politely surprised. “Well, never mind. Perhaps you know it by one of its street names. It’s a narcotic; not a very harmful one at that, at least not for high-spectrum users, who report effects ranging from blissful relaxation to euphoria and a sense of invulnerability. Lowblood users, as always, are more likely to encounter side-effects such as muscle spasm and hallucination. To humans it’s entirely lethal. The only reason I mention it at all is that six months ago it was elevated by the Ministry of Health and Purity from a Class Green to a Class Blue substance, making both its possession and its distribution a blood crime.”

“Alright, I’vve heard enough of this horseshit,” said Eridan roughly. “I don’t need a fuckin’ lecture on narcotics offences. Get out.”

“Interesting,” said Terezi. “Count Ampora, I’ve misjudged you! I had assumed a highblood with a substantial quantity of illegal chemicals hidden in his block would take a more cautious and less openly hostile approach. Evidently your reputation as a man who fails to think things through is not undeserved.”

There was a horrible silence. I stood frozen, feeling a bead of sweat detach from the hair on the nape of my neck and trickle down under my collar.

“Noww listen here, you stupid bitch,” began Eridan. “It doesn’t wwork like this, you understand? You don’t get to charge in here and start makin’ baseless accusations about all sorts of fuckin’ rubbish – ”

“Oh, shut up, you pathetic adolescent,” said Terezi irritably. “Let’s not make this any more embarrassing than we have to. You’re guilty as sin and you know it.”

Eridan’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t provve anything.”

“Of course I can!” she nearly yelled. I jumped. “I can prove _everything_ , Eridan. I wouldn’t have come here otherwise. The name Kalima Nilras mean anything particular to you?”

The seadweller stopped looking shifty and looked genuinely puzzled. “No.”

“When you try and _rape_ a girl, Eridan,” Terezi said in a voice like knives under gauze, “you really ought to remember her name. It’s just good manners.”

Dark blood surged to his face. “Are you fuckin’ serious?”

“Perfectly! You attempted to force your attentions on Ms Nilras after a society dinner early in Michaelmas term. Tore her dress, and left a nasty bruise on her face when she tried to fight you off. She showed me the photos she took. She’s never shown them to anyone else, of course, too scared of what might happen to her – we’ve all heard the tales about where pointing fingers at highbloods gets you – but I took her out for coffee a couple of weeks ago. Poor thing, I think she was just glad to let it all out to someone.”

“This is bullshit,” Eridan snarled. “Wwhat the fuck are you trying to _achievve_ here, exactly, Pyrope? You think maybe if you tell evveryone I pushed a girl around wwhen I wwas drunk they’re going to haul me in front of the Bloodcourt? You’vve got no fuckin’ idea howw high I’m connected. You try and bring this to a Lacerator, they’ll laugh in your face.”

“No,” said Terezi, and she sounded almost sad. “No, I don’t think I can drag you to the Cruellest Bar, although there’s nothing would make me happier. But you’re not thinking long-term, Eridan! I’ve spent the last two months tracking down witness testimony or material evidence for _every single little misdemeanour_ you’ve committed while you’ve been at Oxford. Every fight you’ve started, every girl you’ve ‘pushed around’, every bit of drunken vandalism, every gram of stuff you’ve shoved up that aristocratic nose. None of it’s very spectacular – nothing that could send you to the knives – but taken together, you’d better believe it can hurt you. If it all gets to a court, you’re finished. That cosy job they’ve got lined up for you somewhere high up one of the big Ministries? Finance, maybe, or Aggression? Gone. All these contacts you’ve been building up with your parties and your schmoozing and your golden handshakes? They’re all going to have sudden inexplicable attacks of amnesia and forget they ever knew your name. Dualscar’s going to have to drop you like a hot potato unless he wants to go down in flames as well. Oh, you won’t _die_ – no-one’s going to spill a drop of your precious purple blood – but you’ll be lucky if you get as a job as a fucking _janitor_ after this hits the press. You ever cashed a benefits cheque before, Count Ampora? Do you even know _how?_ ”

“Jesus Christ,” muttered Eridan. The angry flush had faded from his cheeks, and now he looked pale and distinctly unhealthy. I could see tiny beads of sweat along his forehead and the fine creases of his gills. “You’re insane. Wwhat makes you think anyone’s going to take your wword ovver mine?”

“They’ll have to,” she said simply. “You forget, Eridan; I’m a blueblood too. Not indigo, sure, but blue enough that they’ve got to listen. They won’t tell _me_ to run along and play. They’ll make me a cup of bad coffee and have a junior officer listen seriously to my concerns. And that’s all I need. From there it’s just procedure, and believe me when I say I am _very_ good at procedure.”

“Alright, alright.” Eridan held out his hands in a pacifying gesture, for all the world as if Terezi were a friend he’d annoyed and he could buy her a drink and get her to calm down. I wondered if he realised yet that it wasn’t going to work that way. “You’vve made your point, Pyrope. You’vve done your homewwork, you’vve got me ovver a barrel. So wwhat’s the deal? You wwant money? A wword in the right ear at the Inns of Court? I can make it happen, easy.”

Terezi stared at him, and for a second a look of such awful, such vicious and searing contempt writhed across her face that I could barely look at her.

“I want you dead, Ampora. I want you pegged out on the front lawn of this college so crows can tear at your guts. Unfortunately that purple swill in your veins means I’m just going to have to settle for smashing up your life and grinding the pieces into the dirt. But don’t get the wrong idea. This isn’t a negotiation. I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you what’s going to happen, so I can watch you wriggle before the axe comes down.”

Eridan’s yellow eyes were huge and horrified. “ _Wwhy,_ for fuck’s sake?”

“ _You killed my friend,_ ” she said, like four bolts sliding home, and it hit him. I saw the flicker, saw him realise for the first time since the conversation began who she really was, and that there was no way out.

“Captor,” he said hoarsely. “All of _this_ is about Sollux fucking Captor?”

I braced for an explosion, but none came. Instead Terezi seemed to settle back a little, breathe out some of the rage that had crackled in her limbs like thunder in a jar. She looked as if this was an interesting question she had not fully considered.

“He was a genius,” she said quietly. “You probably don’t know that, do you? Not just a clever guy; a bona fide genius. IQ off the scale. He could solve problems programmers with ten times his experience swore were impossible, problems no-one else realised were problems. His tutor said he just looked at things in a different way. He might have fixed things we don’t even know need fixing yet. He was a genius and he made me laugh and he ate cereal with no milk and liked honey in his coffee and his matesprit loved him to _pieces,_ and you killed him because he made you look stupid at a party.”

“It wwas a duel,” Eridan muttered. “I gavve him a chance.”

“No, you didn’t. That’s how you seadwellers stay on top; you never pick fights you might lose. You were faster than him and stronger than him, and the point is you think that’s all that matters. He lost a duel? Well, he was weak, he had it coming. That’s our problem, Eridan! All of us. We’re so fixated on our stupid warrior ideals we think speed and strength and – and _brutality_ are the only things worth having. Art, and science, and music, and stories? We can leave all that to the humans; they’re too soft and pink to be good at anything else. One of these days we’re going to get a nasty surprise, and it won’t be because we’re not tough enough. It’ll be because we killed Sollux, and all the other weaklings who could actually have fixed our fucking culture.”

“Talk like this could get you arrested, Pyrope.”

“Yep! But not as arrested as you’re about to be. Tell you what, in, ooh, about an hour, when the officers turn up to escort you to the station, tell ‘em you heard some blueblood girl spouting dangerous leftwing rhetoric. Maybe they’ll drop the multiple charges of drug possession and sexual assault and come after me instead.”

She turned slightly. “Come on, John. I’m finished here.”

Eridan _moved_. From a standing start – balanced, almost relaxed, leaning slightly against the back of the armchair – he flung himself towards the door before I had a chance to yell. Terezi was faster than I, fast enough to read his intent as a last-ditch bid for escape, and she stepped nimbly left and in to block him with her body. They collided. He grunted, and she gave a little hiss. Then he staggered back and away, and I saw the knife, and I saw the blood.

Terezi reached a hand up to her chest, to the teal stain spreading and soaking her shirt from just under her left breast. She stared at her bloody fingers as though they were a puzzling piece of evidence she couldn’t quite square away. Then she turned to look at me, and swung her other hand up almost casually to take off her glasses. Her hot red eyes – drawn by some magnetism I did not and cannot comprehend – found mine with perfect accuracy.

“Dave,” she said, and to this day I do not know if it was a command, a farewell, or a warning.

Then she dropped neatly to her skinny knees with hardly a sound and crumpled sideways onto the carpet. It was as compact and as graceful a movement as any I had seen her make. Blood the colour of the sea in winter began to soak into the soft creamy pile.

I stared wildly at Eridan. He looked back at me with the same expression of triumph bordering on panic I had seen when he struck down Sollux. The short blade in his right hand was sticky with Terezi’s blood.

“Eridan, you – my God, what – ”

“Didn’t see _that_ one coming, did she,” he breathed.

“You – Jesus Christ, you’ve killed her!”

He laughed unsteadily and glanced down at the knife. “Like she said. If all that shit had got to the Lacerators, I’d havve been finished. And I’m not finished, Egbert. Not by a long shot.”

“So, what?” I said. I knew I should be terrified. I was trapped in a room with an unstable seadweller who had just murdered a high-spectrum troll. Adding a human to the pile would trouble him about as much as squashing a fly. And I could not hope to fight him. But somehow, all I felt was a dull sense of horror, coupled with a strange suicidal fatalism. I was going to die. It hardly mattered. “You’re going to kill me too, right? And then kill anyone else who looks like they might get between you and your, your _dream job?_ ”

“Come on, Egbert, keep up,” he said nastily. “This one may havve been a crazy bitch, but at least she had two brain cells to rub together. I don’t need to lay a finger on you.”

My new self-destructive urges drove me on. “Then what’s to stop me going to the Lacerators right now? Terezi thought she had a good case against you. Think how much better it’s going to look when I add _murder_ to the list. Proper murder, this time, not stupid legal troll murder.”

“Oh, I hope you try. They’ll probably lock you up for wwastin’ police time. You’re a human, Egbert, your wword’s wworth dick to them.”

“So maybe I won’t tell them myself. Maybe I’ll tell someone else. You know, Eridan, I got on really well with Feferi at that party last year. I think she kind of likes me! Maybe I’ll give her a ring, take her out for a drink, let her know her ex is a murderous fucking psychopath. I bet _she_ ’ll listen to me.”

His eyes gleamed with anger, and for a moment I thought I’d done it, pushed him far enough to win me the knife in the gut I craved. But then he just smiled.

“You’re still not seein’ the big picture, old boy. Your friend Pyrope’s dead. The only wwitnesses are you, and me. You say anything to anyone about wwhat happened here, I’ll tell the wworld you killed her. Just flipped and shanked her, right before my astonished fuckin’ eyes. If the Lacerators wwant to put the rap on someone, you think they’ll pick Dualscar’s heir, or some fuckin’ random human no-one’s evver heard of? Think hard, noww.”

My chest felt suddenly hollow. “That’s bullshit,” I said, trying to sound confident. “There’s no motive, for starters. Terezi’s one of my best friends, why the Hell would I want to kill her?”

“Oh, dozens of reasons,” he said dismissively. “Jealousy, maybe. She’s shacked up wwith Lalonde these days, right? And _evveryone_ knowws you two spent first year sucking each other off – ”

The world went white. I saw Eridan rushing closer and realised dimly that I had thrown myself at him. I was making a noise I’d never heard before. My hands flexed like claws, itching to get at him, to grip and tear, to push my thumbs into his eyes until the yellow jelly burst and spilt, to wrap around that sleek grey throat and _squeeze_ –

His backhand was effortless, and hit like a solid wooden bar. I spun backwards, lost my footing and crashed heavily to the floor, landing awkwardly half on top of Terezi where she lay unmoving on the carpet. With a yelp of horror I pushed myself back and scrabbled to my feet. Her blood was warm and sticky on my hand. The front of my shirt was a mess of blue-grey smears. A sunburst of pain pulsed thickly in my jaw. Eridan was laughing.

“You’ll wwant to burn that shirt, Egbert, or drop it in the rivver. If the Lacerators find it they’ll havve all _sorts_ of questions.”

I backed towards the door, trying not to vomit. The shock had driven all the fight from me, and the pain had set my survival instincts running again. I no longer wished to go out in a blaze of glory. I just wanted to get away from this terrible place and this smirking monster who moved like a snake and killed my friends like cattle.

“Remember,” he said softly, “you keep quiet, and wwe both wwalk awway from this. You try and make a fuss, and the next thing you knoww the Lacerators’ll be kicking in your block door. And all the evvidence in the stinkin’ wworld wwon’t help you then.”

I turned and ran.

* * *

I did not stop running until I reached the shelter of a staircase on the other side of the quad. Looking back, I cannot believe I dashed straight across an open quadrangle, in broad daylight, spattered with fresh blue blood. Happily I met no-one. I dived into a small bathroom just inside the archway, slammed and bolted the door, fell to my knees on the grey linoleum, and threw up into the toilet until my stomach was sore and heaving and empty. Then I slumped back against the wall and cried like a child.

After a few minutes I felt able to stand. I wanted to take the tainted shirt off at once – it felt as though it might burn my skin if I wore it any longer – but I had nothing to replace it with, and I suspected walking back to college stripped to the waist would attract even more attention. I was wearing a jacket, at least, and so I simply buttoned that up as high as it would go, which covered most of the stains. It looked rather unnatural, but not enough that people would ask questions.

When I went to the sink I found that I was quite unable to wash my hands. My right palm and fingertips were smeared with sticky teal gore from where I had landed on the bloodstained carpet. The blood was still wet and would be easy to rinse off, but I could not do it. I had left Terezi, poor broken defenceless Terezi, to be picked at by the enemy, in defiance of all I had learnt from Homer and Vergil. A Homeric hero, I knew, an Ajax or a Diomedes, would have fought to the death rather than leave his friend’s body as a trophy for his foes. I had failed dismally to live up to that standard, and now this thin coating of blood was all I had left of her. I could not simply turn on the cold tap and swirl her away down the drain.

It was the strangest thing I had ever done in my short life, but then and there in that poky little bathroom it seemed the only thing I _could_ do: I raised my hand to my mouth and licked her blood from my palm. It tasted of salt and metal, the same taste I remembered from sucking at cuts on my fingers or from probing at a loose tooth. I have no idea what weird and ancient pagan notions drove me on from the depths of my unconscious. I felt somehow that this way at least part of Terezi would live on in me, some paltry scattering of her atoms would become mine, some tiny spark of the great fire she had been would twinkle yet among my dust and embers. _non omnis moriar. I shall not altogether die._ This rite performed, I was able to turn on the taps, and I scrubbed both my hands with green liquid soap from the dispenser until the skin was pink and tingling.

Then I hurried back to my own college, head down as though walking into a stiff wind.

* * *

The next morning I awoke to an E-mail. The President of the College announced, with the deepest regret, the tragic death of Miss Terezi Pyrope (2nd year Classics). Miss Pyrope had been found by a member of the domestic staff late last night at the bottom of the spiral staircase leading from the Old Library down into West Quad. An ambulance had been called, but on arrival the paramedics said she had been dead for at least an hour. It was assumed that Miss Pyrope had lost her footing while attempting to navigate the library stairs, which were notoriously steep and treacherous, and had fallen. Miss Pyrope had been a brilliant scholar and a much-loved member of St Benedict’s and would be greatly missed by all who had been fortunate enough to know her. We were reminded that both the Chaplain and the College Counselor were available if anyone wished to talk about what had happened; and we were urged once again to be very careful when moving around the older parts of the college, since the stone in many places was worn and slippery, particularly after wet weather.

While I was still scanning down these empty platitudes, taking little in, my inbox chimed and another new message appeared.

John, 

I’ve just fielded a more or less incoherent ‘phonecall from Karkat, of all people. He seems to be under the impression that something terrible has happened to Terezi. Can I assume some crucial fact has been mislaid or misreported somewhere? He was so upset I couldn’t get any straight answers out of him. I tried ringing Dave but his ‘phone’s off. Do let me know what’s going on. I hope you’re alright. 

RL xx

I sat on the edge of my bed with my face in my hands and tried to think straight, to collate my options, to approach the situation rationally and methodically. _Terezi,_ I murmured silently, _help me out here. What’s the next move?_ She didn’t answer. Perhaps she was angry with me for leaving her behind.

I could go straight to the Legislacerators, now, before events progressed any further, and tell them what had really happened. But Eridan had not exaggerated: at best they would write down my name and promise to be in contact, and I would never hear from them again; at worst they would write down my name and promise to be in contact, and six hours later an assault team would break down my door and haul me off to jail for attempting to pervert the course of justice. The Lacerators were renowned for many things, but subtlety was nowhere on the list.

I could tell someone else, someone who might be better placed to influence matters: Feferi, Rose, even Dave himself. All of them, I felt sure, would have ways of being taken seriously. But I had no doubt Eridan would follow through on his promise, and play his ace. I was safe only as long as Terezi’s death remained an accident. The words of my fourth-form Citizenship and Culture teacher, a stern middle-aged woman with iron grey hair, echoed inside my skull. _Far-left political tracts often attempt to depict the mechanisms of troll justice as fundamentally prejudiced and unfair. This is a gross exaggeration. The principles of Alternian law are much same as our own, with one vital difference: the burden of proof. In human law, any individual is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Troll law works exactly in reverse. When formally accused of a crime one is, by default, guilty; the job of legal teams is to establish conclusive arguments for innocence._

 _Conclusive arguments for innocence._ There were none I could make. I had been there in the room; there had been no other witnesses; the wound was one I could plausibly have inflicted. CCTV footage could be pulled to demonstrate me acting suspiciously minutes after the murder. The knife was irrelevant, I could have dropped it down any one of a hundred drain gratings in Oxford, or scrubbed it clean and left it in a cutlery drawer. And motive; what was motive? As Eridan had proved with such horrible ease, it would be the work of seconds to stitch together a halfway feasible reason why I might have slaughtered one of my dearest friends. Perhaps they would say I had envied her success in Mods.

And then I could not face what came afterward. The murder of a highblood troll was a crime of appalling magnitude. I could expect no leniency: I would die, and it would not be a pleasant death. In troll eyes, notions like lethal injection and even hanging were as pointless as throwing a criminal into a prison cell but leaving the door unlocked. Execution was not merely a way of getting rid of a troublesome member of society. It was a punishment, so it must be prolonged; and it was a deterrent, so it must be public. Once you were handed over to the Carnifex and strapped naked to the tilted gurney with its long stainless steel runnels, in full view of the crowds and the cameras, once your head was secured and your eyes clamped open so that you had no choice but to watch, death was still at least an hour away. The drip-feed of stimulants into your system would prevent your body chemistry flatlining from shock. The lucky ones, they said, had their minds snapped clean in half within the first few minutes, at the sight of what was being done to the meat they thought of as their body; although they would continue to scream almost ‘til the end, the screams would be the high, broken noises of an uncomprehending animal, whines of wild and empty agony no rational mind could produce. Those who had the misfortune to be resilient suffered far worse. Their screams blurred physical torment with a kind of frenzied disbelief at what they saw but were helpless to prevent. The certain knowledge that I would be in the former camp, that my feeble mind could not long endure even the sight of my skin being peeled back and hooked open in preparation, did little to console me. I nearly vomited again at the mere notion. My head swum with terror.

I forced myself to send a brief and stilted reply to Rose, explaining in as few words as I could that it was true, Terezi was dead, and that I would let her know if I found anything else out. Then I got dressed and went to see Dave. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. In my heart I had half convinced myself that I was Terezi’s true killer; that my cowardice and paralysis had murdered her just as surely as if I’d put my hand over Eridan’s and helped him drive the blade home. I could not face him, could not go through the ludicrous pantomime of shock and grief and bafflement I would be required to stage. And yet I could not stay away. I had deserted one friend already; to desert a second would be monstrous.

I hoped he would be out. In fact, his door was ajar, but when I knocked and pushed it open he was nowhere to be found. I knew what that meant. I turned and walked back down the landing to where an old earthenware sink , dusty and cobwebbed with neglect, jutted out from the whitewash of the wall. Above it a little wood-framed window hung open. With a confidence born of long practice I planted one foot on the sink’s edge, heaved myself up, gripped the peeling windowledge with both hands, and hauled myself inelegantly through the gap and out onto the leads.

He was sitting a stone’s throw away on the shallow slope of the tiles, knees hitched up in front of him, wearing nothing but his shades and a tattered old pair of jeans. There was a half-full bottle of vodka propped within reach against a brick chimney-stack. He was smoking, and staring out across the rooftops of Oxford. He did not turn his head as I approached.

I sat down cautiously a couple of feet away from him. He let out a mouthful of smoke.

“Hey, John.” His voice was steady and quiet.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Yeah.”

It was only ten a.m., but the day was already hot. The morning sun warmed my face and the backs of my hands, although the grey slate under my palms still felt cool. The rumble of traffic sounded far away and faint. I remembered sitting up here with Rose and Dave one evening near the end of my first year, fascinated by the differences in the way they handled cigarettes. Rose smoked neatly and precisely, twitching the cigarette clear of her dark lips just far enough to blow a plume of pale smoke, no effort wasted. Dave liked to tilt his head back and let mist dribble sensuously from nose and half-open mouth, flinging his arm out and away in wide dramatic sweeps that seemed to say _this, all of this is mine._

“Fell downstairs, eh,” he said expressionlessly. I jumped.

“That’s what I heard.”

He made a noise that was almost a chuckle. “Well. I warned her.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Sorry. She’d have laughed.”

He took another drag on his cigarette.

“The Old Library steps are pretty bad,” I said, truthfully. “I nearly fell down them myself once.”

He jerked his head angrily, once, as though trying to shoo away an annoying wasp. “It’s bullshit, John, and you know it. You ever watch her walk around the place? I mean, actually sit and _watch_ her? She moved like a fucking dancer, for Christ’s sake.”

He was quite right, of course. In nearly two years I had never once seen Terezi slip, stumble, or miss her footing, even after enough drink to set the average student staggering like a naval cadet. The grace of her movements had been almost spooky. But one would need to have spent a lot of time with her to know that, and I did not expect anyone else but Dave would find the story unconvincing. Many people in college knew her from a distance merely as ‘the blind girl’. They would not stop to question how she had come to fall down a flight of treacherous stairs.

“And _don’t_ tell me she was blind,” he said, as though reading my thoughts. “She saw better than anyone I fucking know.”

I said nothing. Wild hope had seized me. Could I, somehow, _lead_ him to the answer? Could I push him in the right direction without actually telling him what had happened? _Gosh, yes, there must be something they’re not telling us! Maybe there’s something they’re covering up?_ But it was useless: if the truth got out, Eridan would assume I had been the source, and I would go to the Carnifex regardless. Maybe Dave would too. He, I knew, would stay fiercely sane for as long as he could. The thought of the noises they would drag from him made the great old building beneath me seem to sway and tilt, as though trying to tip me down into the quad all that way below. Maybe I’d put a permanent dent in the paving-slabs, something that could be shown to future tourists.

It lay in my best interest – perhaps both our best interests – to keep Dave in the dark. To reassure him that accidents did happen, that even Terezi could have missed a step, that there was no plausible alternative. But I could not do that either. I could not sit and pour lies into his ear when my hands still itched from his girlfriend’s blood. If I could not tell him the truth, then at least I would not lie to him.

“Look, I’ve got to go,” I said. “Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t drink all that vodka yourself, at least not up here. Call me the minute you need something. And maybe give Rose a ring, she’s really worried.”

I stood up carefully and began to make my way back across the tiles towards the window.

 _You two are like the_ definition _of moirails!_

 _Shut up, Feferi._

“John,” he said, and I stopped to look back over my shoulder. He was still gazing out across Oxford. “Keep Friday free, okay? Cancel your tutes, or whatever.”

“What’s on Friday?”

“The funeral.”

I tried to swivel to look at him properly and nearly lost my footing. “Terezi didn’t have a guardian!”

“I know. I’m going to pull some strings. No point having more money than God if I don’t use it, right?”

“Will your mother be okay with that?”

“ _Fuck_ my mother,” he said succinctly.

I turned and left.

* * *

He had not exaggerated. On Monday morning I found in my pigeon-hole a rectangle of cream card printed in a tastefully restrained black font, informing me that Miss Terezi Pyrope was to be buried at Strider’s Edge, noon on Friday, and that a short memorial service would be held at the graveside, followed by a buffet lunch on the Great Terrace of the house if the weather was fine.

I did not see Dave for the rest of the week, but just after 9 o’clock on the Friday morning, as I was finishing getting dressed, he turned up at my door. He was knife-sharp and perfect in a black suit, white shirt, and thin black tie, hair neatly combed, with a fat scarlet poppy tucked in his buttonhole. He was still wearing the shades. I had never seen anyone make funeral wear look so impossibly cool. I suspected Terezi would have approved.

“Thought you might want a lift,” he said, as if we were simply off to the shops.

“Thanks,” I said, dragging the knot of my own tie tight and shoving it up into position, then tucking the starchy flaps of my collar down around it as neatly as I could. “Do I need to comb my hair, d’you reckon?”

“It’s a funeral, John,” he said, deadpan. “Not the end of the world.”

* * *

As the car crunched and rattled up the gravel of the drive I asked, “Did you actually mean it on the invitation when you said she was going to be buried _at_ Strider’s Edge? Like, at the house?”

“Rose wrote the invites,” he said. “But yeah. Mother kicked up a fuss, said it wasn’t consecrated ground or some bullshit. She thought we should use the graveyard by the village church, was all ready to go down and talk to the priest in person. I told her TZ wouldn’t want to be shoved in the dirt next to Josiah Spottiswoode, born 1745 died 1810 of the festering horse pox, also Chastity his beloved wife, died bearing their nineteenth child, RIP, _our days on the earth are as a shadow and there is none abiding_. She’d want to end up somewhere nice.”

We climbed out of the car and he led the way across the lawns, heading round the side of the house. It was shaping up to be that rarest and most elusive of beasts: a perfect English summer’s day. The sky was a glorious blue shot with seams of silken white cloud, the sun’s heat was tempered by a cool breeze which plucked at my hair and flapped the cuffs of my trousers. Swifts made quick darts from high up under the eaves of the building. The flowerbeds were in full bloom, opulent stripes and whorls of primary colour shivered like the surface of a lake by buffets of wind, and their scent was rich and almost sticky in the air.

“I was going to show her this place,” Dave said, almost to himself. “The house, the gardens. This summer. Bring her out and give her the tour.”

I wanted to put my arm round him. Instead I said, “She’d have loved it.”

“Yeah. Can you picture it? She’d have gone fucking mental.”

“She’d probably have got down on hands and knees and started nibbling the azaleas, you realise.”

He laughed – an open, honest laugh, not his usual half-reluctant chuckle. “Jumped in the pool with all her clothes on because it’s _just so fucking blue._ ”

“Wrapped herself in that big hunting tapestry outside the ballroom and refused to come out.”

“Snorted the dust off the library books like coke off a club washbasin.”

“Licked all the paintings in the long gallery.”

“Dave Dave your ancestors were _delicious._ ”

We were both laughing now. I felt as though I had not laughed in years. As we came within range of the main terrace I saw chairs had been laid out in two neat blocks of nine apiece, with a kind of aisle left between. At the front end of this aisle, where the altar would be in a church, an impressively bulky coffin of dark oak with gold handles on the side was standing on a table draped with red cloth for the occasion. Tall vases of brightly-coloured flowers had been placed on stands to either side, and there was a free-standing wooden lectern. A few people in dark clothes were milling around or taking their seats.

Dave’s face hardened abruptly into its usual lines. “Alright,” he said, “let’s do this.”

We jogged up the steps together. When we reached the top he peeled away to the left to go and talk to his mother, who was standing with an elderly troll in a black robe and a white dog collar. I turned in the other direction and came face to face with Equius and Nepeta.

“Hey, guys!” I said, surprised but pleased. “Thanks for coming.”

Nepeta fixed me with big sad eyes. She was in a plain black dress and tights, with a little black fascinator set at an angle on her head, from which a flimsy veil fell to cover part of her face. I saw with relief that she had foregone cat ears for the occasion.

“I really _liked_ Terezi,” she said mournfully. “She was so nice. She came with me to Roleplaying Society a couple of times and she took it really seriously, never teased me or anything.”

“She was good at taking things seriously,” I said. I glanced at Equius, who was gazing with a stricken expression up at the vast Baroque majesty of Strider’s Edge. Sweat gleamed on his grey forehead in the sunlight.

“Is that her matesprit?” Nepeta murmured, sneaking a look past me in the direction Dave had gone.

I nodded. “Yep. This is his house.”

“It’s ever so big,” she said in tones of wonder. “His family must be very rich.”

Equius made a kind of strangled gurgling noise. I decided to leave them to it.

* * *

The service, such as it was, passed quickly. I sat in the front row on the left-hand side, between Rose and Karkat, the latter of whom kept snuffling angrily in a furious private struggle not to cry. I patted him on the shoulder at one point and he shot me a look of scorching hatred which almost made me splutter with deeply inappropriate laughter. The priest rattled through some vague and nondenominational prayers and blessings, general goodwill stuff about the infinite mystery of the afterlife and the rewards awaiting the just. Doc Scratch got up and gave a bizarre sort of rambling sermon which I don’t think anyone really understood; had it not been for his own obvious sorrow, I would almost have suspected a prank. After some eloquent opening remarks about what a gifted student Terezi had been and what a fine mind scholarship had lost, which went down well, he veered off on a peculiar tangent and started talking about alternate universes. He kept saying something about how her death would not have been permitted by ‘the alpha timeline’. It was halfway between a paper at a quantum physics seminar and being cornered at a party by some nutcase with off-the-wall religious convictions. I lost the plot about two minutes in, and sensed from the shuffling and coughing in the rows behind me that no-one else was keeping up either. Only Rose seemed keen and attentive.

I let the colourless voice stream untroubled over my head, as I so often had in tutorials, and stared at the coffin. The truth was so close it was unbearable. Anyone who examined Terezi would surely be able to see that she had not died from a fall. Dave’s decision to arrange a funeral must have thrown whoever was helping Eridan into a panic. They’d have been relying on state cremation to rub out any traces of the crime, and then suddenly they’d learnt they would have to hand over the corpse intact. Crazy possibilities sprouted between the flagstones of my mind. I saw myself walking up as though to say a few words, stumbling, and sending the coffin crashing to the ground; the lid falling free with a hollow boom, Terezi’s body revealed, still streaked with dried gore, the knife-wound as clear as a finger pointed in accusation...

But this was only a gratifying fantasy. Plucky John Egbert’s daring and courageous action exposes crime and corruption at the highest levels of the spectrum! They would have cleaned the body up for burial, probably even stitched the wound, made all look serene. It would take detailed examination to find any tell-tale traces, and what could I do? Hurl the lid off the coffin in front of all the guests and start tearing at Terezi’s clothes? Whisper to Dave that he might want to check out his girlfriend one last time before he put her in the ground? Stand up dramatically and demand a formal inquest, like a character in a bad TV serial?

Scratch finished speaking and I joined in the patter of hesitant applause. Rose got up next and read a poem. I had thought she might go for some standard bit of elegiac funeral fare, but in fact she had chosen George Barker’s ‘Summer Song I’, a weird, vivid, angular poem full of stumbles in the metre that catch a listener off-guard like a sharp grey elbow to the ribs. She read it beautifully.

 _Great summer sun, great summer sun,  
Turn back to the designer:  
I would not be the one to start  
The breaking day and the breaking heart  
For all the grief in China. _

_My one, my one, my only love,  
Hide, hide your face in a leaf,  
And let the hot tear falling burn  
The stupid heart that will not learn  
The everywhere of grief. _

_Great summer sun, great summer sun,  
Turn back to the never-never  
Cloud-cuckoo, happy, far-off land  
Where all the love is true love, and  
True love goes on for ever. _

Karkat lost the fight and dissolved entirely. I swallowed a lump in my throat and tried to ignore the growing tightness behind my own eyes. I risked a glance sideways at Dave. He was a thing of solid stone.

When the little ceremony was over we all stood up. I looked around for Rose to congratulate her on her reading, but she was off to one side, deep in earnest conversation with Doc Scratch. Dave came over to me and put a hand on my arm.

“John,” he said quietly. “Are you okay to help with the coffin? We need to carry it a fair way. I was thinking you, me, Vantas – ”

But suddenly something loomed between us and we turned to see Equius, sombre and dignified in his funeral garb like some heavily-muscled undertaker.

“Lalonde,” he rumbled, awkwardly. “Allow me.”

Dave looked at him for a couple of seconds, then gave a quick nod. “Okay.”

Equius strode over to the bier, braced his hands under the great oaken coffin, and swung it up with a grunt of effort. Then he turned it side-on, propped it on his shoulder as I might have carried a plank of wood or a cardboard box, and began to walk slowly down the temporary aisle and towards the steps. Everyone stood dumbfounded and watched him go.

“Fucking _Hell,_ ” said Karkat. At his elbow, the old priest turned to peer at him with an expression of saintly horror. Karkat noticed and coughed sheepishly. “Oh. Uh, sorry, Father.”

* * *

We made our way in Equius’ wake across the lawn and further off, towards a little copse of dark yew trees that marked the northernmost extremity of the grounds. One tree grew separate from the rest, in a patch of long grass all its own, and in this tree’s dappled shade a dark rectangular pit yawned, a great mound of loose brown earth by its edge. We used ropes and a wooden pallet to lower the coffin into position at the bottom of the hole, its brass nameplate gleaming up at us like teeth in a smile. Then we all stood grouped in a rough arc, facing in. The priest murmured a last valedictory blessing, and Dave stepped forwards, almost to the brink of the pit. I suffered a momentary burst of panic that he was about to fling himself in as well, like Laertes at Ophelia’s grave.

 _I’m sorry, Terezi,_ I thought desperately. _I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger. I’m sorry I let you die._

There was a short silence, and then he began to speak, clear and strong against the hissing of the wind in the yew-trees.

“ _iro ha nihoheto  
chirinuru wo!  
waka yo tare so   
tsune naramu?  
ui no okunama  
kefu koete  
asaki yume mishi  
wehi mo sesu._”

I recognised the words at once: the _Iroha_ , written over a thousand years ago as a mnemonic for the Japanese syllabary. It had been one of Terezi’s favourite poems. I remembered her sitting in the bar, glass of wine temporarily forgotten, speaking each syllable slowly and with relish while forming the appropriate symbol in neat blue biro on a napkin. “You see, John,” she had told me fiercely, “it’s perfect! It codifies a system, a set of rules, and at the same time it says something true. _And_ it’s beautiful. What more could you possibly want from a poem?”

 _Colours, though fragrant, pass like flowers.  
Who in this world will remain unchanged?  
If today we cross over the deep mountains   
of transient reality,  
we shall no longer see meaningless dreams  
nor be intoxicated._

Truth, beauty, and the rules. Dave took the scarlet poppy from his buttonhole and tossed it down onto the coffin, his lips forming words I could not hear. A ragged flock of crows lifted from the copse and rose calling.


	12. Jupiter

_**AEH** Love will not be deflected from its mischief by being called comradeship or anything else.  
 **Housman** I don’t know what love is.  
 **AEH** Oh, but you do. In the Dark Ages, in Macedonia, in the last guttering light from classical antiquity, a man copied out bits from old books for his young son, whose name was Septimius; so we have one sentence from_ The Loves of Achilles. _Love, said Sophocles, is like the ice held in the hand by children. A piece of ice held fast in the fist._  
\- Tom Stoppard, ‘The Invention of Love’

Terezi’s death seemed to wound and diminish the college itself. Perhaps it was simply my perception; perhaps the weight of my guilt, the overpowering, choking awareness that I and I alone knew how she had died, made my eyes heavy and my steps slack. But there seemed less life to go around, somehow. Students hurried across quads with their heads down where once they had dawdled in laughing groups. Walls that had once felt secure and comforting, like a barrier against the iniquities of the world, now hemmed in and oppressed us. Even the weather took a turn for the worse. The day after the funeral, a warm grey slanting rain began to fall from a sky the colour of cement, and barely stopped for a week.

At the end of that week Eridan Ampora disappeared.

The news took a while to leak out. The first I heard was a snatch of discussion in the dining hall: ‘did you hear about that guy at St Al’s who’s gone missing?’. Confirmation only arrived with the student newspaper on Thursday, which bore a single-column article on page 6 saying that second-year History student Eridan Ampora was believed to be missing, that he had not been seen since leaving a cocktail bar in North Oxford late on Friday night, and that anyone who had any information relating to his whereabouts should contact St Aloysius’ College. At the top of the column was a head-and-shoulders snap of Eridan in black tie that looked like it had been taken at a ball.

* * *

I went to see Dave. He was in his usual armchair, wearing artfully distressed jeans and a tee-shirt for a band I’d never heard of, reading a book. Seeing my face, he rose wordlessly and went to fetch whisky and the soda-siphon. He walked not with his usual easy grace, but with the heavy, slightly shambling steps of a boxer who has taken one too many shots to the head.

“Did you hear about Eridan?” I asked, when we were both settled with our drinks.

“Yeah. I expect he’ll turn up sooner or later.”

“You’re not worried?”

“Are you?”

I had not really stopped to wonder that. Going to Dave’s had been more or less an autonomous reaction; my feet had chosen a direction without bothering to ask for my approval. Did I want to see Eridan again? No; in fact, the thought of meeting him made me feel physically ill with guilt and shame and hatred. Knowing him as I did, I thought the chances were good that he’d panicked and fled; fled Oxford, perhaps even the country. He was weak and stupid and a coward – albeit his cowardice was nothing to mine - but I did not believe he was fundamentally evil. If Terezi’s fate was haunting me like this, what effect must it be having on the one who had driven home the knife? No, if he had run away, good riddance. But then there would be no closure. Then I would never really be able to rest easy. Twenty years down the line, he could turn up at my door, frighten my children, invade my home. _You knoww wwhat wwe did, Egbert._

“I guess I’d feel happier knowing where he was,” I said finally.

Dave swirled the ice-cubes in his glass with a wet clatter and said nothing.

“I... liked your reading,” I said tentatively. “At the funeral. I didn’t get a chance to say so.”

More silence. Dave did not look at me, but nor did he make any attempt to cut me off. I summoned my courage and pressed on.

“I know how much Terezi liked that poem. The _Iroha_. I remember her explaining it to me in the bar. She thought it was so clever.”

He looked up, then, and for a second he almost seemed amused.

“Did she tell you about the secret message?” he asked.

“The what?” I said stupidly.

He looked back down. “How much do you know about Japanese writing, John?”

A world ago, that question would have been asked with a lazy, drawling superiority; nothing but an opening. I would faithfully admit that I knew nothing, and he would despair elaborately of my ignorance and then hold forth on whatever it was I should have known, because come on John, everybody knows _that_. Today it sounded quiet and straightforward, and I sensed he was not looking to show off.

“Not very much,” I said. “I know they have multiple scripts. And I know it was all originally based on Chinese. That’s about it.”

He stared into his whisky. “The _Iroha_ was first written in an obsolete script called _man’yogana_ ,” he said tonelessly. For a second I was back in Doc Scratch’s study. “If you read it in the original, and take the last symbol in each line, you get an extra sentence. It was her favourite part. She explained it to me like four fucking times, that’s how I remember it so well. _toga nakute shisu_.”

The blond head rose again, slowly, and behind the wall of his shades I felt his eyes lock onto mine.

“It means ‘die without wrong-doing’.”

The clock on the sideboard ticked like a fat wooden heart. From somewhere down in the quad I heard a single faint shout of laughter, and then silence.

“What did you do with the body?” I asked, finally. The words sounded oddly matter-of-fact in this civilised and tranquil room, cloistered in the academic sanctity of an Oxford college. I might as well have been asking him what he’d had for breakfast.

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, does it? Either they’ll find it or they won’t. Depends how hard they look.”

“He was Dualscar’s heir, Dave,” I said. Why was I so calm? “You know they’re going to look.”

“Yeah.”

“And they’re going to find it.”

He said nothing.

“So what happens then?”

“Well,” he said, “that will be interesting, won’t it?”

* * *

The next few days were agonising. I was reluctant to leave Dave’s side; I think I feared that someone might sneak in and arrest him while my back was turned. Unfortunately, in its nine hundred years of history Oxford University had seen far worse than the disappearance of a single student, seadweller or no, and so Trinity Term trundled blithely on its way. I was now embarking on ‘Greats’, the longer and more difficult second half of the Classics degree, and the workload had if anything intensified: I had more lectures to attend and more essays to write, as well as my continuing weekly tutorials with Doc Scratch. These were now one-on-one affairs, and I had no Terezi to pick up the slack or bail me out of dead ends. In her absence Scratch’s searching gaze had nowhere to fall but on me, and the tutes became correspondingly harder and more stressful, to the point where I began to regard them with active dread. After each enforced excursion I would hurry back to Dave’s room, arms full of books and papers, and mount the stairs in the absolute certainty that this time I would be too late; there would be policemen on the landing and yellow tape across the door. There never was, of course. He was always there just as I had left him, shades in place, drink at his elbow, scribbling on foolscap in the window-seat – he wrote all his essays longhand, an affectation I had never understood – or slumped with catlike unconcern before the television.

I remember a philosophy tutorial – one of the few tutes I had in my time at Oxford with anyone other than Scratch – in which we tackled the topic of persistence through time: one of those strange metaphysical issues which never even strikes one as a problem until it is patiently explained how much we take it for granted, from which point on it is nigh impossible ever to look at one’s surroundings in the same way again. If we put a pencil down on the desk and then pick it up again, how can we be sure it is still the same pencil? The answer, as always in metaphysics, turns out to be _we can’t_. On this occasion, though, my tutor – whose name I have, to my embarrassment, entirely lost – told us that the concept of object permanence, a basic mental axiom on which we rely hundreds of times a day and without which we would quickly go insane, is not innate but learnt. The dictum of object permanence can be summarised as _things continue to exist_. Adults know that if they put their keys on a table, leave the room, and come back, the keys will still be there unless some other agent has moved or taken them. Young children have no such comfort. Every time a child puts a toy down, it has no idea whether it will ever pick that toy up again. Only with time and experience does it gain the blissful certainty that toys can be _left_ , put to one side, even put back in their box, without thereby abandoning them to the whims of a chaotic and uncaring cosmos. Yet even adults, in times of great stress, may feel this conviction slip, feel the tendrils of their old unconscious doubt creep back in. _I don’t want to let it out of my sight._ Object permanence. Persistence through time. Do you know where the thing you love most in the world is right now? Or do you only know where you left it? And if you leave someone and walk away, who will they be when you come back to them?

* * *

Given how much time I was spending either in the library or with Dave, it is something of a wonder that I was in my own room long enough for what happened next to happen, but happen it did. Fairly early one morning I answered a knock at my door and found, standing in the corridor, a pair of men I did not recognise and a troll woman in the distinctive uniform of a Legislacerator.

“Mr John Egbert?” said the first man.

“Yes.”

“I’m Detective Sergeant Graves of the Thames Valley Constabulary.” He flashed a badge. “This is DC Papen, and our associate, Judiciator Redglare of the Oxfordshire Department for Justice. We’d like to ask you a few questions. Do you mind if we come inside?”

The detectives settled themselves in my armchairs and accepted tea with an obvious gratitude that reassured me. The Legislacerator, a fierce-looking woman with short wiry hair and an impressive pair of horns, leant against the door and refused any hospitality with a curt twitch of the head. She looked faintly disgusted at her surroundings. The sunglasses she wore, and her overall air of _spikiness_ , reminded me uncomfortably of Terezi.

I sat on my desk chair with my own mug of tea and nodded patiently while DS Graves – the older of the two, perhaps my father’s age, his face lined and weary but not unkind – went to some pains to reassure me that this was a routine part of their enquiries, that they were working closely with the Legislacerators to interview as many as possible of Count Ampora’s circle of acquaintances in a bid to establish where he might have gone, and that there was nothing for me to worry about. The last comment was so wildly inaccurate that I almost laughed, but instead I tried my best to look helpful and concerned.

Graves finished his spiel and flipped over the top of his notepad.

“This shouldn’t take long, Mr Egbert. Could you tell us when you last saw Count Ampora?”

My mouth felt abruptly dry. I had hoped for a little more grace before I had to plunge into outright lies, but there was nothing for it. I could hardly say I’d dropped in on the man who killed Sollux to ask him if he’d had a nice vacation. And the only people who could contradict my story were dead.

“I haven’t seen him all this term. Not since Hilary.”

“Have you had any contact with him at all this term? E-mails, ‘phone calls, text messages?”

“No, nothing.”

“The last time you saw him, was his behaviour in any way unusual? Did he say anything that struck you as strange?”

Eridan in Dave’s doorway, face dark with drink, the effortless genetic superiority of the true highblood pouring off him like smoke. The way my throat had tightened on reflex. _Christ almighty, who died?_ The rabbits and the tigers can work together for as long as they like, but when a single rabbit meets a single tiger in the forest, ask him afterwards how it felt.

 _Don’t embarrass yourself, dear boy. You don’t evven havve your sword._

 _Don’t need it._

“No, I don’t think so. He was kind of drunk, but... he seemed his usual self.”

Nods. A brief note taken.

“I realise this may seem a strange question, but we’d be interested to know what you think. Did Count Ampora have anyone with whom he was on bad terms? Anyone with whom he’d argued, say, or who didn’t like him very much?”

 _How long have you got?_ , I thought. “Well, quite a few people in this college weren’t too fond of him.”

“Why’s that?”

I hesitated. “Do you know about Sollux Captor?”

The detectives exchanged glances. Over by the door, I saw the Legislacerator stiffen slightly, as though taking an interest for the first time.

“Yes,” said Graves carefully. “We know about Mr Captor.”

This was thin ice and we all knew it. Here in the room with us was one of the last great raw edges of troll/human co-operation, one of the faultlines that still gave the lie to all our politicians told us about stability and prosperity. It would take a few heartbeats for this to turn unpleasant.

“Not everyone at St Benedict’s,” I said, picking my way through the words like nettles at the bottom of a garden, “approved of Count Ampora’s actions.”

“Irrelevant,” said the Legislacerator sharply. “His actions were within the law.”

“I know. I’m not saying they weren’t. But some people thought he took it too far.”

“Did you?” asked Papen.

“Yes.”

Redglare seemed to be looking at me with new eyes. I sensed her opinion of me had not improved. “Do you disapprove of duelling, Mr Egbert?”

I saw the sergeant flinch minutely.

“I don’t think it’s my place to express an opinion,” I said.

She smiled thinly. “I agree. But we’ll overlook that fact for now.”

I bit down on my anger. “I... don’t have any strong feelings one way or the other. But Sollux was my friend, and I don’t think he should have died.”

“And you reckon others in the college feel the same way?” asked Graves, with a visible effort to get the questioning back on track.

“I’m sure they do. I mean, not just humans. Trolls, too.”

“Did Mr Captor have a lot of friends?”

“Um. I’m not sure what you’d count as _a lot_. He had enough.”

“And can you think of any other reason someone might have held a grudge against Count Ampora? Even something very small.”

 _You’vve got no fuckin’ idea howw high I’m connected._

“No,” I said. “I can’t think of anything.”

* * *

When the three of them left – thanks for the tea from Graves and Papen, a sniff from Redglare – I had to dash to a lecture, and then to the Bodleian. My business there consisted of ploughing through a hundred-page article on Roman agrarian law. Terezi, who had known more about Roman law than I suspected the Romans had, would have filleted it in half an hour and given me a precise critical digest. It took me all day; I kept stumbling over technical terms and having to go back and re-read pages a second and a third time. By the time I left the library it was nearly dark. When I finally reached Dave’s room at about nine o’clock, headachey from footnotes and famished from skipping dinner, I found Rose there too. They were watching TV.

“Hey!”

Dave flapped a hand at me. “Shut up a sec, John.”

I realised they were both intent. Dave was leaning forward in his seat, elbows on his knees, and Rose was sitting up straighter even than normal. Either someone had reached the final question on _Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?_ , or this was important.

I let the door swing shut and moved round to get a better view. Rose reached down into her satchel and produced a fat pair of smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches in a plastic carton, which she thrust towards me without taking her eyes off the screen. I accepted it gratefully and tried to peel back the label as quietly as I could.

On the TV a discreetly glamorous troll news anchor was sitting behind a curved desk. The image above and to her left showed the same picture of Eridan as had been printed in the student paper.

“ – can confirm that the body of Count Eridan Ampora, who went missing nearly a fortnight ago, was found this afternoon by officers from the Oxfordshire Department for Justice,” she was saying. “Legislacerators have so far refused to disclose any details concerning the discovery, but we’re hoping to get a statement shortly. Count Ampora, who was a student at Oxford University, disappeared following a friend’s wriggling day party – ”

Dave flopped back in his chair and huffed out a breath. He looked suddenly tired.

“Let’s get some fresh air,” he said.

* * *

‘Fresh air’ was a long-standing piece of private shorthand for the roof. The three of us climbed out with a bottle of red wine and a packet of cigarettes and made ourselves comfortable with our backs to a broad brick chimney-stack: me at one end, then Rose, then Dave.

“Did the police come to see you?” I asked him, between mouthfuls of sandwich.

“Yeah.”

“What’d they ask?”

“Followed the script, I think. Had I noticed anything odd about Eridan around college. Did he have any enemies. I don’t know why they don’t just quit fucking about and ask us all straight out. One: did you kill him? Two: do you know who did? Okay, thanks for your time.” He took a swig from the bottle and passed it to Rose, who wiped the neck delicately before putting it to her own mouth.

“They didn’t know he was dead until this afternoon,” I pointed out.

“Then they’re idiots. A seadweller drops off the radar for two weeks? What did they think had happened, he’d gone off to Nepal to find himself? Renounced all his worldly goods and started living in a beach hut in Goa? Jesus.” He shook his head.

“Did they ask you about Sollux?”

“Not much. Asked if I’d been a friend of his. I said no, not really, and they lost interest.”

Rose turned to face him and composed her features into an attitude of businesslike detachment. “Were you and Count Ampora _close_ , Mr Lalonde?”

“I fucking doted on him,” said Dave seriously. “We were like _that_. Used to go round for sleepovers and give each other back-rubs. I’d braid his hair, he’d tell me about his shitty excuse for a love life. _Wwhy do nice girls hate me?_ It’s a tragedy he was taken from us so soon.”

“Never mind,” she said consolingly. “I expect he’s with the angels now.”

“Hope they’re kicking his arse,” he muttered, and flicked the glowing end of his cigarette neatly into the lead-lined gutter.

I was not quite ready to join in their jokes. Rose and Dave together had a special kind of humour, jet-black and bitter as espresso, which had always been a little strong for my stomach. And I had seen what they had not: Eridan, knife in hand, over the body of Terezi. They had not seen how fragile she looked in death. They had not seen his _face_.

“You’re positive you didn’t miss anything?” I asked hesitantly. “Anything that could, you know, give you away?”

It felt strange to talk of such things on a rooftop, open to the night wind and the stars. But I knew that if we were _going_ to talk about it, this was the safest way. ‘Phones or E-mail were much too risky, and the Legislacerators were certainly not above planting listening devices in rooms or houses during a case of this importance. Here, four floors above the ground, tucked in a gap between chimney and crenellation, no-one could see or hear us; and even the Lacerators would have trouble bugging a roof.

“For the hundredth time,” Dave said impatiently, passing me the wine, “ _yes_. I’m positive. No tell-tale hand-print on a wall, no DNA under his fingernails, no matchbook for the Hotel Bellagio dropped at the crime-scene, no mysterious dragon charm carved from green soapstone clutched in the dead man’s fist. I was careful.”

“When he was twelve he read nothing but detective fiction,” Rose put in helpfully. “He thinks about this sort of thing. Once he spent two weeks working out in obsessive detail how we could kill Mother and get away with it. Of course, I was in my Lovecraft phase at that point, so I just wanted to sacrifice her to Nyarlathotep and damn the consequences.”

Dave snorted. “Trust me, John. Somewhere, right now, Philip Marlowe, Peter Wimsey, Inspector Morse and Sherlock fucking Holmes are holed up in the corner of a bar, working their way down a bottle of scotch in despairing silence.”

“Do you think Lord Peter drinks scotch?” said Rose, interested. “I’d always pegged him as an Islay malt type.”

This set them off on an involved discussion over what a whole collection of fictional detectives would order in the pub. I tilted my head back to rest against the brickwork, stared up at Orion, and tried not to worry.

* * *

When we got back to the room we opened another bottle of wine and sat down to try and play cards, but the game had hardly started when there was a pounding at the door. We all stared at each other. I thought I saw a shadow of anxiety pass across Rose’s face.

“Don’t answer it,” she murmured.

We sat frozen for a few seconds, but then the knocking began again, redoubled in volume and ferocity, and with it came a voice.

“Lalonde! Open the fucking door, dickhead, I know you’re in here! Your fucking light’s on!”

I relaxed. “It’s only Karkat,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

I went to let him in. He was very drunk. His face was hot and flushed, his black hair sticking up and out at crazy angles, and he was leaning on the door-jamb for support. When I opened the door he staggered and almost fell inwards. His breath smelt sweet.

“Jesus,” he said. He looked genuinely surprised to see me. “John.”

“Are you okay, Karkat?”

“Course I’m fucking okay. Why wouldn’t I be fucking okay?”

I got him into an armchair. He smeared a hand across his face and favoured me with a haggard stare.

“You guys hear about Eridan?”

Dave nodded, reached for a spare glass. I shook my head minutely and he let the arm fall. Karkat didn’t seem to notice.

“Jesus,” he said again. “Hell of a thing.”

There was an awkward silence. His ignorance seemed to sit like a weight in the space between the four of us. I wondered if we should be reacting more, but he was staring into the distance, apparently lost in thought.

“What d’you reckon happened?” he said at last.

“You mean it wasn’t you?” Dave asked mildly.

I’m not sure I had ever seen someone’s jaw literally drop before that evening.

“Wh – Lalonde, _fuck!_ ” he hissed. “You can’t just fucking _say_ things like that! Of course it fucking wasn’t me, you stupid prick, you don’t seriously think – ”

“Karkat,” I put in gently, “he was joking.”

He did not seem mollified. “Oh yeah? And what if, I don’t know, the Lacerators have got some kind of fucking gadget set up in here and they’re listening to every word you say? Pretty Goddamn funny it’ll be if I get hauled off in the middle of the fucking night and the next time you see me I’m strapped to a fucking butcher’s block on live TV, you pack of arseholes!”

I realised he was genuinely frightened, and then wondered why I was surprised. The investigation would inevitably start with Sollux and work outwards; the tenor of Graves’s questions earlier had more or less proved that. Karkat had known Sollux better, and for longer, than any of us. And half a dozen witnesses had seen him having to be restrained from a physical assault on Eridan after the duel. It was very plausible that a list of suspects was being drawn up at the Department for Justice even now, and that his name was at the top. My fear had made me selfish; it had not crossed my mind that others, too, had reason to be afraid.

“Come on,” I said. “I’ll get you back to your room.”

As I took him by the elbow and guided him towards the door, Dave said quickly, in Greek, “ _Keep a guard on your tongue, my friend._ ”

“ _Don’t worry,_ ” I said. Only halfway down the landing did it occur to me that I’d used the wrong word, and what I’d actually said was _do not disturb_.

* * *

I had feared that Karkat would be a belligerent drunk, but in fact he was surprisingly meek, and I was able to lead him back to his bedroom on the other side of college without difficulty. I sat him on the bed, filled a pint glass with water from the cold tap, and stood over him while he drank it all, stopping between each mouthful to curse and grumble about how I wasn’t his fucking moirail and I shouldn’t get any fucking ideas, and how water was fucking awful anyway, who’d even invented it, why hadn’t they made it _taste_ of something. Then I dug out his pyjamas from under a cushion and dropped them on his lap.

He reached for his shirt collar and then stopped and glared at me.

“What?”

“Turn around.”

“Oh, seriously, Karkat, it’s not like – ”

“Fucking turn around, John, Jesus! What do you think this is, some kind of fucking _strip_ club?”

The sudden image of Karkat in lacy underwear, gyrating against a chrome pole, eyed across the footlights by lustful businessmen with sweaty bottles of expensive lager, gripped my mind and refused to let go. I choked with laughter.

“Karkat, this would be like the worst strip club _ever_.”

He flushed. “Shut the fuck up! And _turn around!_ ”

I sighed theatrically and turned my back. “Okay, okay.”

There was some rustling and a creak of bed-springs.

“Can I look now?” I asked patiently.

“If you must.”

I turned. He was huddled up in the bed, blanket pulled up round his chin, yellow eyes regarding me balefully from under his messy black fringe, like some sort of grumpy woodland creature roused too early from its den. Unexpected fondness stabbed at my heart.

“John,” he said, a little uncertain. “I really didn’t kill Eridan. You believe me, right?”

“I believe you.”

“I mean, okay, he was a massive douche, and I fucking hated his guts. Not like that, you know, regular hate. But now he’s actually _dead_ I – Jesus. Even after – even after what he did. I didn’t hate him _that_ much.”

 _Of course you didn’t_ , I thought. Karkat’s endless rage was a sparkler, like the ones they sell to kids for Bonfire Night. It sputtered and jumped and crackled in all directions at once, and you couldn’t help watching it. But it was quite the wrong brand of anger for something like this. Sparklers are beautiful, but if you want to cut steel, you don’t want a sparkler; you want a blowtorch. A single, narrow flame, unwavering, and so hot it makes the air blur. So hot you hardly see its edge.

I bent down on sudden instinct and kissed his forehead. His skin was warm, and dry as paper. When I straightened up he said nothing, just stared at me.

“Sleep well,” I said, and left, turning out the light behind me as I went.

* * *

A week passed without event. I watched as the media took hold of the story and gnawed it like a dog with a bone. This time it was page one. ST ALOYSIUS’ STUDENT MURDERED, screamed the student newspaper. Dualscar’s Heir Found Dead, Foul Play Suspected, said the nationals more cautiously. No-one interviewed could even begin to suggest a reason for so vile and senseless an act. Count Ampora had been popular both in his college and in the University at large, a member of several societies, an excellent student of whom his tutors had predicted great things. All in all, a pillar of the community. Excitable commentators lined up to propose increasingly wild theories. Had he witnessed a crime, and been killed to ensure his silence? Was it a politically-motivated attack on Lord Dualscar? Was a serial killer at large in Oxfordshire?

The Department for Justice remained tight-lipped about the circumstances in which the body had been discovered, and so rumour blossomed outward to fill the gaps: I heard that the body had been wrapped in a tarpaulin and hidden in a tree a few miles outside Oxford, that it had been left in the boot of a battered Ford Mondeo on the car-park of a motorway service station, that it had been concealed under a pile of old wine-crates in the cellars of St Aloysius’ itself. I did not bother to ask Dave if there was truth in any of these stories. As he said, it hardly mattered.

I found I was increasingly uncomfortable on my own. Even in my room, which had always felt like a refuge, I was unable to settle. I would get into bed with a book and then sit staring at the same page for half an hour, taking nothing in. On one particularly unpleasant occasion I woke at half three in the morning with the abrupt conviction that someone was waiting outside on the landing. I padded out into the main room as stealthily as I could and sat on the sofa, panicky and tense in the darkness, straining to listen, with my eyes fixed on the thread of yellow light beneath the outer door. Nothing moved. Eventually I crept over and, my heart in the back of my throat, pressed my face to the little brass peep-hole set in the centre of the timbers. The distorted fish-eye lens showed nothing but the empty corridor stretching away to the head of the stairs. Had another door further along just closed, or was it my imagination? I went back to bed, but as I pulled the sheet up I was seized by a pin-sharp vision of Terezi, gliding back to her station to continue the wait, her dead scarlet eyes fixed on my door, a thin trickle of teal still running down from the corner of her mouth. I lay shivering until the sky outside the window began to lighten and the birds sang.

* * *

That very afternoon I received an unwelcome visitor. It was Redglare, the Legislacerator who had been present at my interview, and this time she was on her own.

“Mr Egbert,” she said flatly. “I’m going to have to ask you to accompany me to the station.”

Ice water trickled down through my chest and into my guts. “Er. Why’s that?”

“We’ve made some progress investigating the death of Count Ampora,” she said, “and we’ve got a few more questions we’d like to ask you. If you don’t mind.”

“Of – of course. Just hang on while I fetch a jacket.”

She made no move to prevent me from ducking into my bedroom and retrieving my jacket from the wardrobe. I tried to tell myself this was a good sign. Surely if I was a suspect, she would not want to let me out of her sight?

The fifteen-minute drive to the Centre for Justice seemed to pass far too quickly. I sat in the back and stared out at the shop windows and front gardens that whipped by, half my mind scrabbling wildly at the notion that this was the last time I would ever see them. One heard tales of people taken away by the Lacerators who somehow failed ever to re-emerge. Redglare sat in the front passenger seat, gazing ahead and saying nothing, while a younger male troll who I assumed was her partner drove. From time to time the radio squawked and crackled with bits of routine chatter so laden with jargon and abbreviation they might as well have been in another language.

When we arrived I was shown, politely enough, into an interview room – bare concrete walls, a brushed-steel table, and flourescent tubes hung from the ceiling on short chains. I sat down in the metal chair on one side, which seemed to curve in precisely the right place to prevent one from ever getting comfortable. Redglare sat facing me. Her partner brought in a beige polystyrene cup of what looked and smelt like coffee and put it by my elbow. No-one tried to handcuff me to anything. I got the message: so far, little human, you are still on the right side of the line between ‘helping with our enquiries’ and ‘own up, we know you done it’. But it is a line only we can see, and trust us when we say you are standing very close. Make no sudden moves.

Redglare flipped open a manila folder and teased out a glossy A4 sheet of paper, which she pushed across the table towards me, just the way I’d seen it done on _The Wire_ and _Cities in Dust_ and a hundred other cop shows.

I looked at it. It was not actually a photo, simply a printed image of some kind of symbol, black on white, blown up to fill almost the whole page. It looked like a Greek capital letter _omega_ , with the ‘feet’ at the sides lengthened slightly, and with another horizontal line drawn underneath it.

“Mr Egbert,” asked Redglare coolly, “can you identify this symbol?”

Under my general terror at my surroundings and my company and the fact that no-one on Earth I cared for knew I was here, I felt the first stirrings of a deeper unease.

“Um, yes. It’s the astrological sign for Libra. The constellation.” I did not mention that I only knew this because Terezi had worn it on a small silver pendant underneath her shirt. I’d seen it once in first year when she’d bent down to pick up a book and it had fallen free, dangling from its chain and glittering in the sunlight. I’d asked her what it was.

“What connotations, if any, would you associate with it?”

My head spun. This was starting to feel like yet another of the unexpected tutorials my life seemed to enjoy throwing at me. What was she driving at?

“Well,” I said, speaking slowly so I could scan for potential traps before falling into them, “Libra is the Scales. So, balance, obviously. Then, um... order, I suppose. Harmony. Logic. Justice.”

“Justice?”

“Yeah. The Scales are one of the traditional attributes of, well, Justice. As a personified figure, I mean. She’s always shown holding them in one hand.”

Redglare seemed genuinely interested in what I was saying. “How else is Justice usually depicted?”

Was it possible that she actually didn’t know? Iconography was sometimes a tricky area – even after all these centuries, trolls could be unaware of signs and symbols humans knew pretty much from birth, and vice versa. I’d once had to explain to Karkat what a circle with an arrow pointing diagonally up and to the right meant. But surely Redglare would have just looked in a reference book?

“Uh. She’s a woman, obviously, and she carries scales in one hand, and a sword in the other. Oh, and she’s blind. Often she has a strip of cloth over her eyes, or something.”

“Do you know how Count Ampora died, Mr Egbert?”

I nearly jumped in my seat at the sudden change of tactics.

“No. The papers didn’t print any details. They just said foul play was suspected.”

She smiled grimly, and again her resemblance to Terezi made my stomach twist. “Rather more than suspected, I’m afraid. Count Ampora died from blood loss, after being stabbed in the torso, more than once, with a bladed weapon – something long and narrow, like a large kitchen knife. Some sort of corrosive chemical had been used to burn his eyes quite literally out of their sockets. That symbol” – she flicked a finger towards the print-out – “had been carved into the flesh of his chest. Tissue degradation is making analysis difficult, but forensics say it’s likely the latter injuries were inflicted before death.”

I sat very still. There was a horrible ringing in my ears. _toga nakute shisu._

“I realise you’re not a detective yourself, Mr Egbert,” she said, in a voice thick with sarcasm – a word which, at this most inappropriate of moments, I suddenly remembered meant _cutting the flesh_ – “but what conclusion would you draw from the evidence just presented?”

“I don’t know,” I said hollowly.

“Come, come, Mr Egbert, you’re at Oxford!” She stood up abruptly and shoved her chair back, began to pace. “Injuries consistent with a _sword_ – not the most common of murder weapons, even among trolls – coupled with symbolic _blinding_ and an icon associated with, as you so ably put it, _balance_ and _justice_. It’s not that hard, is it? Someone thought Count Ampora _deserved_ to die! Now, the question is – what kind of unhinged mind would believe that a troll of his unimpeachable character and reputation, not to mention his exceptional bloodcaste – a noble young man who was popular, accomplished, destined for success – could have _in any way_ deserved such a brutal and barbaric fate?”

She looked at me expectantly, as though she actually wanted an answer.

“I guess you’d have to be pretty crazy,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, more quietly. “You’d have to be pretty crazy.”

* * *

They let me go. I supposed Redglare had hoped that I could be jolted into spilling what I knew. She must know I knew something, or why would she have bothered bringing me in? Or were they going to do the same to all of Sollux’ friends? Was Karkat being grilled about iconography in a different room at this very moment? I wanted to run back into the station and scream. _You idiots, you’re missing the point! The blinding and the symbol meant more than justice! Look harder!_ But I was too close to the flames, and I risked implication already. If I started throwing around accusations, it would look as though I were desperately trying to save my own skin, and make my position even worse. I had to behave as though I genuinely knew nothing. Be helpful, polite, and blank. Get out alive.

I caught a bus heading back into the city centre, but had to get off at the next stop. Everyone on board seemed to be staring at me. I would look up and see heads turn quickly away, hear whispering from the seats behind me. I could still feel Terezi’s blood on my fingers. Images flickered in my mind of Dave waiting in the alley behind the bar, Eridan staggering out, shouting a farewell to someone inside. Dave’s hand on his sword, a plastic bag at his feet falling open to reveal the bright scarlet cap of a squat blue plastic bottle. How quietly he would have moved.

I walked the rest of the way back to college. It took an hour and a half. My ‘phone in my jacket pocket buzzed and bleated; the screen said ROSE. I put it back and walked on. The fifth time she rang I just turned it off.

The Lalondes. Dave and Rose. Why had it taken me so long to see them? Why had I been so infatuated with their glamour and their jokes and their perfect skin I could not see the burning wreckage inside? Moving through life like it was one great entrancing game and only they knew the rules. I should have listened to Vriska. For that matter, I should have listened to _Equius_. _Whatever you do, stay clear of the odd set. They’re like a cancer, Egbert._ What kind of a man could torture a helpless victim and then sit on a roof drinking wine and making jokes about it? Had Rose known, all that time? Had she helped him plan it? Had they stayed up late together, her blonde head on his shoulder the way she liked to rest it on mine?

It was getting dark by the time I reached my room. I switched on my ‘phone: twelve missed calls and three texts. I did not bother to read them, or to check my E-mail. Instead I sat on my bed with the curtains drawn and the lights off and drank whisky from my coffee-mug until I fell asleep in my clothes.


	13. Apollo

_When thou art kind I spend the day like a god;  
when thy face is turned aside, it is very dark with me._  
\- Theocritus 29

 _Live forever._  
\- Donna Tartt, _The Secret History_

I was woken next morning by a shrill rhythmic beeping which cut through the fog of my headache like scissors. At first I assumed I had set my alarm without thinking, but then I realised the noise was my ‘phone. I stumbled out into the living room, found it still on the sofa where I’d thrown it, and checked the screen. It wasn’t a number I recognised.

My head was pounding and I had a filthy taste in my mouth, and I very nearly hit ignore. But there was always the great mantra: _it might be important_. I tapped the green button.

“Hello?” I said, trying to sound gruff and forbidding rather than simply hoarse and hungover and sick with misery.

“Egbert, this is Redglare.”

I nearly dropped the ‘phone.

“How did you get my number?”

“Doesn’t matter.” She sounded impatient, but there was something else there as well. If I hadn’t known better I’d have said she was anxious. “I haven’t got much time. Listen. We know your friend Lalonde killed Ampora.”

“What?” For God’s sake, this couldn’t be happening _now_ , surely? I could barely see! I tried desperately to muster at least the shreds of a strategy. “I don’t think you should be just accusing people – ”

“Shut up and listen! He _confessed_ , Egbert. We know it was him because he _told_ us. A two-page signed confession came through on the Chief’s fucking _fax machine_ the minute the day shift started this morning. Whole place is in chaos. The Chief’s foaming at the mouth. You have to get him out.”

“Wh – the Chief?”

“No, moron, Lalonde! Look, I did some digging last night. I know about the girl. Terezi. Ampora murdered her in cold fucking blood. Lalonde did the right thing. If I’d been him I’d have done it myself.”

This was much too big for me to take in so fast. Instead of taking the hint and springing into action, I floundered.

“But – ”

“ _But_ no-one here cares about that. As far as the Chief’s concerned, we’ve got one shot to bring down the guy behind the biggest murder of the year. David Lalonde’s head on a plateau means promotions all round and no questions asked. They’re going to come at him full force, assault teams, the works. _Get him out._ ”

“How – how long have I got?”

“Well,” she said a little awkwardly, “funny thing, the electronic lock on the station garage seems to have got fucked up somehow. It’s meant to be bomb-proof, but who knows? Anyway, they’ve got to break down a titanium-alloy blast door if they don’t want to be standing at the bus stop, so I figure that buys you twenty minutes. Don’t waste ‘em.”

“Where do we go?” I knew that as soon as the call ended I was going to be required to make big, dramatic decisions at great speed, and was therefore in some perverse way trying to string it out as long as possible, to put off the moment of truth. In the space of thirty seconds Judiciator Redglare had gone from being my nemesis to what felt like the only ally I had left, and I clung to her skirts like a panicked child.

“Anywhere not here. Ireland. France. New fucking Zealand, if you’ve got any friends there. Just start running and don’t stop. Go on, move!”

“Redglare – I mean – uh – ma’am – officer – thanks.”

“That poor girl,” she said, and there was a kind of fierce sorrow in her voice now. “All she ever did was our job for us.”

The line went dead. I dropped the ‘phone, rethought, swore, snatched it up again, and started thumbing buttons while I forced my feet into the shoes I’d kicked off yesterday with the laces still done up.

She answered on the third ring, hesitant, a little suspicious.

“John?”

“Vriska, I’m really sorry, but I need your help. It’s important.”

“I’ll meet you at the Lodge in two minutes,” she said, and hung up.

* * *

She was there when I sprinted up, in a blue dress and a little black jacket. When she saw me her eyes filled with genuine concern.

“Jesus, John! Slow down, you look like you’re about to drop dead! What’s going on?”

It had not even occurred to me to wonder how I looked. I was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and I had not shaved.

“Have you got your car?”

“Yeah, of course! It’s just down the road. John, don’t tell me you need a _lift_.”

“I _really_ need a lift,” I said. “I’ll explain on the way.”

She folded her arms.

“No. Explain here. I’m not a taxi, John. What’s this about?”

“The police are coming for Dave. Not the human police. The Lacerators.”

“Christ. What did he do?”

“He killed someone.”

“ _What?_ ” I could hear every one of the eight question marks. “John, you’re joking! Who did he – ”

Vriska Serket was unpredictable, vain, self-centred, cruel, and sometimes genuinely malicious, but she was emphatically not stupid. She figured it out before the sentence was even finished.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed. “Terezi.”

“You knew?”

“Of course I knew, you idiot! You don’t think _Eridan_ was going to manage to sit on something like that? He came round and poured it all out to me first thing he did! _She wwas going to screww it all up for me, Vvris, you understand, right?_ ”

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” I said, straining my ears nervously for sirens even though I knew there would be none. When a Lacerator assault team showed up you generally didn’t find out about it until the roof caved in. “The point is, they’re coming for Dave, and if they catch him they’ll – well, you know what they’ll do to him.” I did not point out that if _I_ knew, and _she_ knew, then Dave also knew. That he had brought the Lacerators down on himself, and he could not have done it without a full understanding of the consequences. That, in my heart of hearts, it was not the police I was afraid of.

“So what do you need me for?”

“Because I know where he is,” I said, “and they don’t, yet. But I need you to get me there.”

* * *

She drove like a lunatic, bless her. She must have had reservations; after all, Eridan had been her friend, in a strange way I had never understood. Part of her must have been tempted to stand back and let things happen. But perhaps I communicated my urgency better even than I had meant to. At any rate, she ran every red light between Oxford and Strider’s Edge, cut up other motorists with ruthless precision, and hit nearly ninety on some of the straighter country roads. I held grimly onto my seat and offered no protest. I only spoke to give her directions.

By now the Lacerators would have broken into their own garage, fuming and cursing with rage. They would have reached St Aloysius’ and stormed into Dave’s room and found it empty. They would have turned the place upside down; it gave me a silly momentary pang to think of the old mahogany sideboard being stoved in by rifle-butts, chairs overturned, crockery smashed, clothes flung on the floor, in the troopers’ furious eagerness to root out their target. They would probably have kicked open all the other doors on the landing for good measure and terrified a lot of blameless students half to death. They would have found the window onto the roof, which might even have given them a surge of hope. A difficult bottleneck; any troll in body armour trying to squeeze through that hatch would have been utterly defenceless against something as mundane as a steel bar to the skull. They’d have to find another way, or make one. On the roof they’d find cigarette butts, an empty bottle or two: vital clues! But no Dave. I wondered precisely how much damage would have been done to the ancient fabric of Vane Quad by the time the Lacerators were forced to admit he was not there.

Then they would turn to the question of where else he might be. My room? Perhaps it, too, would have been gutted and trampled by now. I found I did not care very much. Would they fall to and search the whole of Oxford? A city that old and that full of secrets would have more than enough hiding places to render the task impossible. CCTV footage would have to be pulled and inspected, which would take time. Porters would have to be questioned, and there is nothing in the world so uncooperative as an Oxford college porter who has decided he doesn’t like you. The only danger was that some bright spark on the force would make the same leap I had, albeit knowing Dave less well. I was sure that if they figured it out, even with the speed Vriska was driving, the Lacerators would be able to get there faster.

The gates at the bottom of the drive were closed and locked. I peered through the thick black traceries of the iron and up at the house. All seemed serene; no armoured vans parked on the croquet lawn, no snipers huddling behind the topiary, no flames licking from the upstairs windows as helicopters circled overhead, or any of the other nightmare visions I’d had leisure to design as we drove.

“What now?” said Vriska uncertainly. I realised this must be her first sight of Strider’s Edge.

“I guess we climb,” I said, and jammed my foot between two vertical bars to rest on the upper slope of a curling iron tendril.

Climbing over a pair of metal gates proved a lot harder than I had expected. I have never been afraid of heights, but there was a dizzying moment as I swung my leg over the top and found myself balanced precariously at what suddenly seemed an impossible altitude: a sheer drop both ways, to gravel on one side and Tarmac on the other, and between my legs a foot-long iron spike in case I thought of getting comfortable where I was. The wind flapped my jacket and tried to tug me off-balance, as though it wanted to carry me off and up into the sky, and I was struck with the acute realisation that I could not get down. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, and by clutching onto the spike with both hands was able to drag the other leg clumsily over the top and find a foothold on the far side. By the time I scrambled down and dropped onto the gravel I was running with sweat and trembling slightly. Vriska, even in a dress, had made it in half the time, and I braced for some scathing comments on my general physical ineptitude, but all she said was, “You okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We set off up the drive at a jog. I had never fully appreciated its sheer ridiculous length before. The neat conical shrubs on either side were spaced at perhaps fifteen-foot intervals, and passed agonisingly slowly. Gravel scrunched rhythmically under our feet. The sun was fierce for June; sweat trickled down from under my hair and my T-shirt stuck clammily between my shoulderblades. I tugged my jacket off impatiently and flung it away onto the grass. I could collect it later. Pointless memories flickered behind my eyes like a broken film reel: cross-country in the Fourth Form, our gorilla of a games teacher bellowing exhortation as we panted around the perimeter of the cricket pitch in shorts and flimsy vests. Rose telling me the story of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of sex and war, who descended to the Land of the Dead and at each of its seven gates was forced to remove another item of clothing. _Perhaps the first strip-tease in recorded history,_ Rose had said coolly, and smiled at me, and I had felt my face grow hot.

When we finally reached the main steps I kept going, and bounded up them two at a time to the front door. Locked, of course. I struck the wood angrily with the flat of my hand.

“Should we ring the bell?” called Vriska, from below me.

“No point,” I said. “No-one’s going to answer. We’ll have to break in round the back.”

I jogged back down the steps. Vriska was staring at me with an odd expression.

“What?” I said, a little more heatedly than I’d meant.

She just shook her head. I decided it could wait, and set off to my left around the side of the house.

In fact there was no need to engage in property damage. When we reached the side terrace, which was basking in glorious sunshine, Vriska grabbed my arm.

“John, look!”

The glass-paned door out onto the terrace stood slightly ajar. We ran up the little staircase that led through a gap in the stone balustrade, and I saw that someone had been here before us. A single tubular metal chair had been pulled up to the large marble-topped table in the centre, and on the table stood an empty green wine-bottle and a long-stemmed glass.

I crossed to the table for a better look. The glass was empty as well, though there was a crimson smear of lees at the bottom of the bowl. A book lay beside it: a Loeb text, boon companion to Classicists everywhere, of the _Letters_ of the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger. One page had been marked with a scrap of newspaper. I flipped it open.

 _...necesse est aut imiteris aut oderis. utrumque autem devitandum est: neve similis malis fias, quia multi sunt, neve inimicus multis, quia dissimiles sunt. recede in te ipse quantum potes; cum his versare qui te meliorem facturi sunt, illos admitte quos tu potes facere meliores. mutuo ista fiunt, et homines dum docent discunt..._

I had no need of the translation on the facing page; it was a passage we had studied for Moderations. I realised with a shiver of disbelief that our exams had only been a term ago.

 _One must either imitate, or loathe. Yet both these courses should be avoided: neither emulate the wicked because they are so many, nor be hostile to the multitude because they are unlike you. Withdraw into yourself as much as you can; spend time with those who will make you a better person, and admit to your company those whom you yourself can make better. These things should be mutual, and men learn while they teach..._

Vriska had come to look over my shoulder. I took my hand away and let the wind riffle the pages. As I did so, I noticed a square of red card propped against the wine-bottle. It bore, in straggly black capitals, the letters JOHN.

I picked it up as though it would bite me. It was not a card; it was an envelope, the flap closed but not gummed down. I reached in and drew out a sheet of letter-paper, folded once across the middle.

It was his writing, in his usual scarlet ink.

if truth in hearts that perish  
could move the powers on high  
i think the love i bear you  
should make you not to die

sure, sure, if steadfast meaning  
if single thought could save  
the world might end tomorrow  
you should not see the grave

this long and sure-set liking  
this boundless will to please  
oh, you should live for ever  
if there were help in these

but now since all is idle  
to this lost heart be kind  
ere to a town you journey  
where friends are ill to find.

 _Housman, eh? Jesus, you don’t look the type._

“John,” said Vriska gently at my elbow. I had never heard her say my name like that before.

I shoved the paper back in its envelope, dropped it on the table, turned away. “Come on,” I said.

Inside the house all was quiet. I wondered if Lady Lalonde was away on another one of her mysterious trips to the continent, or whether she was just secluded in another part of the building. Either way I had neither the time nor the inclination for stealth.

“Dave?” I shouted, as loud as I could. “Dave, it’s me!”

My voice echoed back at me from a hundred empty state-rooms, a hundred vast gilt mirrors and stuccoed ceilings. Nothing.

“Dave, we have to go! They’ll be here soon!”

Nothing. Only the dust that glittered as it drifted down sloping sunbeams told me time itself had not stopped dead.

“Let’s look upstairs,” I said to Vriska, and she nodded.

On the upper landing she began to stick her head into random doorways – motivated as much by curiosity as anything, I suspected – but I knew Dave would not be lingering in some miscellaneous guest room or chamber full of neglected antiques. I set off straight towards his bedroom, over in the west wing. If he was still here, that was where I would find him, among his computer equipment and his strange dead creatures in jars and all the other ironic knick-knacks he had accumulated during his teenage years.

He was not in his bedroom. I felt baffled, but also relieved. There was simply nowhere else in the house I could imagine him being. Taking tea in the parlour? Roaming around the wine-cellars with a torch? Perhaps, after all, he had got out; perhaps the whole thing had been planned, and by the time the Chief Legislacerator’s fax machine had coughed into life he had already been standing on the deck of a cross-channel ferry with Rose, watching from the rail as Dover sank back among the seagulls and the mist.

As I left the room to rejoin Vriska, some instinct drove me further down the landing to its far end, where a door with two smoked-glass panels led into a spacious and airy bathroom. I remembered falling asleep in the great claw-footed bath there one evening, submerged under cloud-banks of scented bubbles, after an expedition into the attics had left me so coated in dust and soot that Rose had threatened to turn the hosepipe on me.

I pushed open the door and stopped.

He was in the bath; his blond head lolling back against the porcelain surround, mouth and eyes closed, arms down by his sides. His shades were neatly folded on the soap-dish. The level came up as far as the middle of his stomach and the crooks of his elbows; the body above was pale as marble; and the still water in which he lay was a brilliant, shining scarlet.


	14. sunt lacrimae rerum

_between us there is nothing but the shadow of the future  
that will never let us go to be together  
between us there is nothing but the snowline of the country  
where you will not be mine  
it’s savage weather_  
\- Pete Atkin & Clive James, ‘Between Us There Is Nothing’

The day after I found the body I sat with Rose on a bench by the side of the road. It was, in fact, the road that led away from Strider’s Edge, although the house itself was out of sight behind the hills to the west. Her car was parked in the lay-by opposite, an incongruous wafer of colour on the grey fabric of the landscape. Yesterday’s hot, bright sun and boisterous wind seemed to belong to another season altogether. Today was flat, and dull, and sticky with humidity. The sky was a morose and sluggish plain of crawling cloud.

“If he hadn’t confessed,” I said, “they wouldn’t have worked it out, would they?”

“It’s impossible to tell,” she replied. She was not looking at me, but straight ahead and down at the white lines on the road. Her hands were folded in her lap. “Perhaps there was something he’d missed, after all. Perhaps they would have got there in the end. But I doubt it.”

“But that wasn’t good enough for him. It had to be the big gesture. The grand tragic conclusion.”

“Is that really what you think?”

I shrugged. “What else am I meant to think?”

There was a silence. I could hear the faint drone of traffic, somewhere far-off.

“John,” she said at last, “what do you think the Legislacerators would have done, if Dave hadn’t sent in that confession?”

“I don’t know. Scratched around for a while longer interviewing people and trying to scare someone into admitting something, I guess.”

“And then?”

“How am I supposed to know?” I said angrily. “I’m not a crazy troll policeman. Probably they’d have stuck some stupid case together with chewing gum and found a fall guy to pin it all on. I don’t know, a pro-human activist, or an escaped lunatic, or something. That’s how they work, right? If you can’t find the guy who did it, find someone who might have?”

“John, they were going to pin it on _you_.”

I turned so fast in my seat that my knee bumped against her thigh. “Sorry – what?”

She looked at me steadily and pushed the hair back behind her ear. “Think about it. The killer had to be someone with some kind of grudge against Eridan. He hadn’t been killed for money, or because he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or anything like that. Opportunistic murderers don’t blind their victims and carve symbols into them. When they first started looking, the most obvious reason for a grudge against Eridan was Sollux, but that didn’t help them much; lots of people were upset and angry about that. Also, the facts didn’t add up. If it was a revenge killing for Sollux, why wait so long to go through with it? The breakthrough only came when someone told them about Terezi.”

“Redglare told me she found that out herself!”

“I’m sure she did. I looked at her personnel file, she’s clearly a rising star. But she’s still only a Judiciator. She’s not top brass. It happened like this: the high-ups at the Department for Justice went to someone even higher up than them and said look, we’re striking a giant blank on this murder, is there anything we should know. Someone very far up the ladder – maybe even Dualscar – knew about Terezi, because he’d helped sweep it under the carpet. The cover-up operation on that was an incredibly professional job, John, it must have taken serious money and serious influence.”

 _You’vve got no fuckin’ idea howw high I’m connected._

“So this mysterious high-up says alright, we weren’t planning to tell you chaps about this one, but if you _must_ know, Ampora had actually bumped off some daft little tealblood who was giving him a hard time about something or other. I’m sure I can count on you gentlemen to keep this on a need-to-know basis, have another brandy won’t you.”

Something in my face must have caught her attention, because she gave a quick and unexpected little snort of laughter. “I’m not being flippant, John. This is how things are actually _done_ at that level. Down among the peasantry it’s all bureaucracy and form-filling and going by the book, but eighty percent of the decisions that really matter in this country happen in smoky oak-panelled rooms after a five-course dinner. Why do you think these people send their heirs and their children to Oxbridge so assiduously? Unrivalled library access?”

My cigarette had burnt down to my fingertips. I flicked it hastily away onto the Tarmac and shook my fingers, keeping my eyes on Rose.

“At any rate,” she continued, “the Department suddenly had its motive. That made matters a great deal easier. Most people, remember, thought Terezi’s death really had been an accident. They’d have had no reason to go after Eridan for it. The killer must have been someone who not only knew Terezi, but knew how she’d actually died. Armed with their newfound knowledge, the Department high-ups quietly pulled the college CCTV tapes for the day of the murder – all part of our routine investigations, don’t worry – and what do you think they found?”

“Oh, Jesus.” I buried my face in my hands.

“John Egbert. Going _up_ some stairs with the deceased at 12:07, and running back _down_ said stairs in obvious distress, alone, fifteen minutes later. Of course, if there’d actually been a proper investigation into her death in the first place, those tapes would have been spotted right away, and then some interesting questions would have been asked. But the black-out was so total no-one ever looked.”

“How did you know – ”

“That it was 12:07? I watched the tapes.” She laughed again. “John, you don’t imagine I’m doing all of this on guesswork and woman’s intuition, do you? I’m not some kind of _seer_. I don’t have a scrying pool or a magic crystal ball. I just have a good computer, a working knowledge of troll security protocols – most of which have so many holes you could strain pasta through them, they really needed poor Sollux – and a lot of free time.”

“You hacked the Department for Justice?” I squeaked.

“ _Hack_ is such a clumsy, masculine word,” she said, and the tiny note of satisfaction was so entirely _Rose_ I wanted to kiss her. “All axes and broadswords. I prefer to think in terms of needles. But anyway, Suspect Number One in the murder of Eridan Ampora had just become John Egbert – the only person left on the planet who _undoubtedly_ knew how Terezi Pyrope had really died.”

“So why didn’t they just drag me off there and then?”

“They nearly did. But they also had their eyes on Dave. Revenge killings are almost always committed by either relatives or quadrant partners – rarely by friends, however close. Dave was in the line of fire simply because he was Terezi’s boyfriend, and therefore by default the most likely person to have done something this drastic; all it would have needed was for you to have told him about what happened, which was very likely, even though as a matter of fact you hadn’t.”

“How _did_ he find out? I never asked him. He knew even at the funeral, didn’t he?”

“Yes. I told him.”

I stared at her. She looked uncomfortably away.

“I’m sorry, John. In a way this is all my fault. After you went to see him that time on the roof, he ‘phoned me up, and all he could talk about was how it didn’t make sense. He simply couldn’t accept that Terezi might have genuinely fallen downstairs. I thought he was perhaps just in denial about it, but he was so upset, I couldn’t bear it.” Her voice cracked a little and she twisted her pale fingers together anxiously. “I’d never heard him like that before. I just wanted to make him feel better. So I said I’d do some checking up, and I did, and the deeper I went the more bizarre it got – late-night money transfers, redacted E-mails, basic paperwork that should have been filed but wasn’t. I hate problems I can’t solve, and I’m afraid I got a little bit obsessed. It took me two days, but I got to the heart of it in the end, only then I didn’t know what to do. I knew if I told him he’d do something stupid. But I thought if I _didn’t_ tell him he’d go so berserk from not knowing he’d probably end up doing something even _more_ stupid, and I’d find out he’d walked into the Department for Justice and started beating up a records clerk, or something ridiculous.”

“So you told him.”

She sighed. “Yes. I told him. He didn’t seem that surprised. I think he’d half worked it out on his own. Or maybe I’m just telling myself that. But yes, if you want someone to blame, blame me. I killed Eridan at least as much as Dave did.”

I didn’t know what to say. In the end I just let her keep talking.

“So the Department passed the word down its street-level officers that the two of you were the chief suspects, thanks to a ‘confidential tip-off’, and suggested they might want to bring you both in for further questioning. Which they did, as you know.”

“They got Dave too?”

“Yes. Redglare made him run the same gauntlet you did – all that melodramatic nonsense with the Libra symbol and the rest of it.”

“And what happened?”

She looked up at me again, a little sadly. “You didn’t have a chance, John. Dave was _faultless_. If there were an Oscar for police interrogation, his name would already be on the base. He was every inch the baffled innocent. Didn’t have a clue about the symbol – thought it might be something to do with the Freemasons. Completely horrified when they told him about Eridan’s death. There’s a moment on the tapes where he really looks like he’s trying not to throw up. I wanted to applaud. You, on the other hand; from the moment you walked in the room you looked like you might be about to die of fright.”

“I _was_!”

“Yes, I know, but it’s a terrible giveaway. Someone who genuinely knows nothing is not that scared in a police interrogation room. Confused, yes, maybe a little nervous, but not sweating with terror. You shifted in your seat. You stammered. You didn’t _touch_ your coffee. When Redglare came out with Libra you rattled off straight away that you associated it with Justice and then looked faintly stricken. You might as well have worn a name-badge saying ‘Hi, I’m John, ask me what I have to hide’. Troll psychoanalysis is about as sophisticated as a brick; if it _acts_ guilty, it probably _is_ guilty. A human watching those tapes might have thought that Dave’s performance was just a shade too pat, but the trolls took one look and said, wow, ask us a hard one.”

“Rose, I’m sorry, I had no idea I was messing up so badly.”

“It’s not your fault. John, your total inability to maintain any kind of façade is one of many lovable things about you, and I hope it never changes. But the point is, the trolls had all they needed. You had a motive, and you’d been shifty enough under interrogation that you clearly knew _something_. It didn’t actually matter whether you’d done it or not. Redglare apparently gave her professional opinion that you were psychologically incapable of having committed the murder, but no-one took any notice. Central Command authorised a seizure warrant on you at 10pm that evening, ready for deployment the next day. I imagine that’s when she smelt a rat; the whole thing had gone through just a little too smoothly. She’ll have started off by asking what made you and Dave the only plausible suspects, I’d wager, and worked back from the two of you to Terezi. Clever girl.”

“Did she get in touch with Dave, as well?”

“No, I did. I was keeping tabs on things from Cambridge; as soon as anything went up on their system I knew about it. I saw the warrant only twenty minutes after it was signed. I rang Dave and told him we needed to get you somewhere safe. We hatched a plan whereby he’d pick you up then and there and take you to the house under cover of darkness, where no-one would think to look for you at first. I’d join you both early the next morning, and then we could figure out the next move. It was all terribly exciting; I felt like some sort of Elizabethan conspirator, plotting assassination in a torchlit cellar. I suggested he should bring Jade too – I was worried they’d go through her to find you. Once the four of us were at the Edge together I reckoned things would start falling into place. But I suppose Dave had other ideas.”

“He knew we wouldn’t make it,” I said. Suddenly the whole dreadful sequence of decisions and realisations spread out before me as clear and comprehensible as the streets of Oxford had looked from the roof of Vane Quad. “He knew they’d follow us wherever we went. We’d never really have been safe.”

“Inherently probable. The Lacerators aren’t subtle, but they are _very_ determined. In pre-settlement days a single Legislacerator would sometimes hunt a mark across star systems for over a hundred years. It’s unlikely we’d have been able to throw them off just by moving to Paris and changing our names. But also, perhaps, he had killed a man; and Terezi would tell us, were she here, that some scales need to be balanced.”

“You didn’t have any idea what he was going to do?”

“No,” she said softly. “Odd that after a lifetime of being able to predict my brother’s every move, I should fail so completely the one time it really mattered. I suppose he’d have appreciated the irony, at least.”

She stared straight ahead into nothingness. I had no idea what to tell her. I wanted to reach out across the sudden gap: touch her shoulder, take her in my arms, kiss her hair and tell her it was alright. But it wasn’t alright, and we both knew that, and I could no more lie to Rose Lalonde than I could lie to myself.

The moment shuddered and passed. She gave a businesslike little shake of the head and stood up. I stood up too.

“This is goodbye, isn’t it?”

She didn’t bother to ask how I’d known. “Yes. I’m leaving this afternoon. Kanaya and I are going to cross to France, then probably to Venice. Eridan’s death has done more damage than I think anyone understands yet. This country is going to change fast now, and I don’t want to be here when it happens.”

“I was going to ask you to marry me,” I said, the words sounding as foolish as I had always been sure they would.

She looked down at her feet. “In another world,” she said quietly, “you could ask me that, and I would say yes without even stopping to think. And there’s precious little I do without stopping to think. But it’s too late, John. You and I don’t fit any more. We’d spend our whole life together blaming each other for not being Dave.”

“What do you mean?” I said, though I knew perfectly well what she meant.

“I killed him. No, don’t look like that, you know it’s true. If I’d had the sense to brush him off when he first came to me – told him I’d checked up and found nothing – none of this would have happened. He’d have been angry, and he’d have drunk too much and probably got in some fights, and he wouldn’t have been very easy to live with for a while. But he wouldn’t be dead. You don’t know it yet, but every time you look at me now you’re going to see the woman who killed your best friend in the whole world. And every time I look at you I’m going to see the man my brother died to save.”

“It won’t always be like that.”

“It will. And it will eat you away from the inside like poison. I can’t hurt you like that. I won’t.”

“So you’re hurting me like this instead?” I said bitterly, hoping to reach her with my pain if nothing else, to put at least one crack in the mask by way of a keepsake. “Cruel to be kind, is that the idea?”

She spread her hands in a pantomime of helplessness. “John, I don’t _know_ why I’m doing what I’m doing. Not any more. It wasn’t meant to go like this. We could still have pulled it back after Sollux, maybe even after Terezi, but now we’ve lost Dave there’s nothing anyone can do.”

My grief was a gulf that swallowed sense. If her words had meaning beyond the sounds they made, it was a meaning too deep for me to reach, and I no longer cared enough to make the dive. I just wanted to curl into a ball.

“I love you,” I said.

Her smile would have broken my heart, if there were anything left of it to break.

“I’m glad,” she said. “But the game’s over, John. You can throw your cards away.”

She bent down and reached into the carrier bag by her feet, which she’d brought with her from the car.

“Here. I have something for you. It’s not much, but you’re the only one who deserves it.”

Straightening up again, she thrust something towards me. I stared in disbelief. It was Terezi’s dragon, Pyralspite: a toy about the size of a cat, covered with soft snow-white fur. It had sewn-on scarlet button eyes and a faintly lugubrious expression. I had seen it many times when visiting her room; the first time, she had insisted on introducing us formally. Sometimes it had even accompanied us to the bar and perched on the table while we drank and talked. I had always thought it sweet that a girl as focused and as mature as Terezi should make this one concession to childhood by lavishing such endless affection on a soft toy. Seeing it here, bright in Rose’s outstretched arms under the grey and menacing sky, made me feel dizzy.

“Dave stole him when they cleared out Terezi’s room,” she explained. “I found him yesterday among all Dave’s stuff. He can’t stay at Strider’s Edge, it’s no place for a dragon, and I can’t bear to throw him away. Will you look after him? Terezi thought the world of you, John. I’m sure she’d want you to have him.”

Wordlessly, I took Pyralspite from Rose’s hands and held him to my chest.

“Take care of yourself,” she said, and pressed one cool hand briefly against my cheek. “Get out clean. I hope you can be happy. God knows you deserve it.”

She turned to walk to the car.

“Rose,” I said, and she stopped, turned back. “How – how could I have made all this go differently? What did I do wrong?”

For the first time in the whole conversation, I saw the glint of a tear form beneath one of her huge dark eyes.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, John. You were perfect. _You always are._ ”

And then I was standing alone, hugging Terezi’s toy dragon uselessly against my body as though for warmth, watching the little car through blurred and swimming eyes until it turned a bend in the road and was gone.

* * *

The next morning I gathered a group of the men outside the house. I stood a little way up the steps as if I were on a podium, scanned their expectant faces – young, as young as I’d been – and tried to inject as much of Dave into my voice as I could.

“This is not our home,” I began. “We are guests here and we will behave as such. Make a thorough search for food and usable supplies, you know what you’re looking for. Any sign of structural damage or of hostile presence should be reported to Sgt Hooper or myself. If you are compelled to smash a lock or force a door, do so efficiently and with care. Commit no acts of violence. If I come upon any man engaged in looting, wanton damage, or desecration – ” I unholstered my sidearm, held it up so they could see it, and peeled back the safety with a wet click – “I will _personally_ put a bullet through that man’s head. Is that quite understood?”

“ _Sir!_ ” snapped back at me, fast and eager. They looked a little awed. I caught Hooper’s nod of approval. They were good lads and I had no real fears, but they had been eating field rations and sleeping in ditches for the last three weeks, and I knew all too well how quickly the strong wine of Strider’s Edge could sweep a young man away.

“Good. Get to work.”

I followed them up the steps and into the house and began to make my own explorations, leaving Hooper to keep an eye on things. The place had survived astonishingly well. Heavy concussive weaponry had been detonated not too far away, I judged; most of the windows at the front were cracked or broken, and the floors were coated in plaster dust and tiny fragments of debris shaken down from the ceiling. In the ballroom one of the vast chandeliers had come loose from its fitting and fallen, creating a great flower of shattered glass and crystal around a warped brass armature; I could not begin to imagine the noise it must have made. But, although artillery had clearly landed nearby, the building itself was untouched. There were no crumbling sections of wall, no holes in the roof. Nor, in fact, was there any sign of upheaval. What I had feared most was bodies. The trolls were on the run; they had not been on the losing side of a war in nearly a thousand years, and they were not taking it well. The thought of what a retreating platoon of angry and desperate troll infantry might do if they came upon an undefended human household churned my stomach. All those serving-girls in their neat black and white uniforms... and if, by some ghastly chance, Rose had ended her self-imposed exile, had come _home_...

But all was serene. There was not even evidence of a hasty departure. Wandering through the house, one would have thought that its occupants had simply packed up and gone for an extended holiday abroad; and indeed, for all I knew, that was exactly what they had done. Strider’s Edge waited patiently for the Lalondes to return. I wondered if they ever would.

While the men were occupied in the kitchens and outbuildings, I headed upstairs. I could not bring myself to search either Dave’s or Rose’s room, but simply pushed the doors back and glanced inside to make sure there were no traces of atrocity. Everything looked very much as I had last seen it, which lessened the knot in my guts, but tightened the pain in my chest.

Eventually, as I had known I should, I found myself in the bathroom. The story here was much the same as elsewhere. The smoked-glass window was splintered and the surfaces were all scattered with plaster dust and chips of wood, but small bottles and jars still stood undisturbed on their shelves, and there was even a blue plastic toothbrush abandoned in a holder on the windowledge. The air was cool and smelt clean. I could hear birds singing somewhere far off. My sidearm felt heavy and sore on the bones of my hip. Perhaps I would rest here for a little.

We were going to win the war, at least in England. Everyone knew it now; Command knew it, the trolls knew it, even the tommies – usually the last to know – could feel it on the wind. Terezi had been right. The trolls were superlative fighters, strong and fast and deadly, but they were hunters, not soldiers. Our weapons were better, our vehicles faster, our codes stronger, our organisation vastly superior. They had little concept of forward planning, and less of discipline. The only tactic their leaders knew was to charge and kill, and it had not been enough. The question now was how many more had to die, on both sides, before Makara swallowed his pride and admitted defeat. But rumour had it that he was more or less insane these days, and besides, I was familiar with troll culture. I knew with grim certainty that the total would be in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands. The slaughter could drag on for months yet.

I thought of Terezi now, still sleeping in the quiet earth where we had laid her, scarcely five hundred yards from where I sat. I thought of Aradia, wondered what she’d done, whether she’d found a new life or simply faded away with her grief into air and shadows. I thought of Feferi, who had made an impassioned speech on the television only a month before the war started, pleading for further negotiations, for both sides to see reason, for peace between troll and human. _We have grown like two plants in a sunlit garden that twine together for support and strength. Together there is no height we dare not think to reach. Torn apart, we can no longer stand. We will fall to earth, and be choked by weeds and slow decay._ They had been brave words, but ones ill-suited to the ears of the troll politicians and generals who chafed at the bonds of long alliance and hungered for the war they claimed their species required to flourish. I wondered if she was even still alive.

I thought of Vriska. Two years ago, or perhaps three, I had heard a rumour that she was not only still active but was working with the Unified Resistance – operating a fleet of small boats in the English Channel, evading coastguard patrols to smuggle guns and supplies into occupied France. It sounded like her style, but not her politics. I could not imagine what sea-change might have occurred to make Vriska Serket help the humans. Some shattering event? Some memory she could not put aside? A person? I missed her laugh. I hoped she was alright.

I thought of Karkat. He had spoken, while we were at Oxford, of his military ambitions. I had never known how seriously to take him, but the chances were he was in the conflict somewhere. He was able and intelligent, and the trolls could no longer afford the luxury of being choosy about bloodcaste. Was he, too, leading men into battle somewhere far away, my unwitting mirror image? Perhaps one day I would look through the sights of my rifle and see those silly stubby horns poking up from under an officer’s cap much like my own. Perhaps we would meet face to face among the ruins of our soldiers on some scoured and blasted field months or years hence, as ion fire scribbled overhead and plumes of smoke and dirt tossed bodies aside like empty wrappers. Could I hurt him? Would he spare me? Would we strike as one, fall together like brothers, and let our red blood mingle in the shell-holes and the mud?

In a minute I would go downstairs. I would muster my men and collate their findings. I would discuss the situation with Hooper, and then make the critical decision whether to leave a garrison to fortify the house, or to push hard north at once in an attempt to catch the remnants of the Twelfth Legion before they could regroup. I suspected I already knew the answer. Strider’s Edge was safe and the trolls were gone. A garrison would only waste men we would need for the bloody fighting still to come.

Perhaps I would desert. I knew this house; I could sneak away and be lost among the forests before anyone missed me. Out the back stairs, down by the swimming pool, up the track into the woods we took once with a picnic hamper and two bottles of chilled champagne, the sun in my eyes and Rose’s arm in mine and Dave leading the way, and laughter, always laughter. I had a gun and I had papers and I knew how to fight. I could get a boat across the Channel – perhaps even one of Vriska’s boats – a train down into Italy, pick up the trail. I could find Rose and Kanaya, if they were still alive, and pour out whatever days and months and years I had left into keeping them safe. That would be a good use of a life, would it not?

But I was so tired. I had not slept well for so long. And it was silent here, and cool, and I fancied I could smell jasmine.

 _The game’s over, John. You can throw your cards away._

 _All of the cards have been there from the start, and they cannot be damaged or destroyed by anything we do._

 _Colours, though fragrant, pass like flowers.  
Who in this world will remain unchanged?  
If today we cross over the deep mountains  
of transient reality,  
we shall no longer see meaningless dreams  
nor be intoxicated. _

To rest, oh, to rest. I climbed carefully into the dusty bathtub, lay down, and closed my eyes.

* * *

 _To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom._  
\- Evelyn Waugh, _Brideshead Revisited_

(play [closing theme](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu4oy1IRTh8))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _La commedia è finita._
> 
> If you are reading this and have also read all the preceding sixty-five-thousand-plus words, I would like to thank you. I’m under no illusions about how peculiar a fanfic this is, and there have certainly been times I’ve been grimly aware that I’d probably have made more people happy if I’d just written 3,000 words of canon fluff about Dave and Terezi failing to decide what kind of pizza to order. But I’ve kept going because clearly there were people out there who were genuinely enjoying my mad experiments, and I didn’t want to let them down. Thanks to everyone who left kudos and/or feedback, it’s been tremendously encouraging. (If you thought the whole thing sucked, don’t worry, I shan’t be doing anything like this again for a while.)
> 
> I owe a special debt of thanks to urbanAnchorite; I was very conflicted about this project to start with, and without the following exchange (summarised for brevity) –
> 
> PT: _should I write a lengthy Homestuck fic based on Brideshead Revisited_  
>  UA: _yes_
> 
> none of this would be here for you to read. (In other words, blame her.) She and Cephied Variable also made me some fanart for Chapter 7 which is _so beautiful_ I have not dared post it here, for fear it would overshadow the whole of my story with its _appalling majesty_.
> 
> If you have any questions about things I did or didn’t do with the fic, feel free to post them below and I will do my best to answer them intelligently. One thing I regret is how many of my initial ideas didn’t make it into the final version: there was originally going to be a _lot_ more about the Lalonde family, and Jade, Kanaya, and Doc Scratch were all going to get more time in the spotlight than they actually did. (I feel worst about Jade, who was intended to be a major character, but including her story arc would have made the thing about five chapters longer and twice as complicated. Sorry, Jade.) There’s a whole bunch of stories still to be told in this AU, and I don’t know whether I’ll ever get round to telling them. In the meantime, I’m turning out the lights but I’m not locking the door; if something here has captured your imagination, please feel free to run with it in whatever form you choose. (What kind of a life do Rose and Kanaya build for themselves in Venice? What the Hell is Vriska up to in the English Channel, and is it making good use of her Pure Mathematics degree? And, most importantly, what actually _happened_ the night Karkat turned up at John’s room and ate all the instant hot chocolate? _All these questions need answers._ ) If you’re not sure how best to capture the original’s style, just make all the characters drink tea constantly and stick a pretentious Latin quotation at the top. Job done.
> 
> All colleges mentioned in the story are fictional; however, if you’re trying to fit events onto a map of Oxford, St Benedict’s is just a little further north from where the real St John’s stands, St Aloysius’ (which, incidentally, should be pronounced al-oh-ISH-us, rhyming with ‘delicious’) is a thinly disguised version of Christ Church, and St Cecilia’s is equivalent to Corpus Christi. All other references to Oxford’s geography, and to the University’s courses, ceremonies, institutions, and weird traditions, are as accurate as I could make them. The St Giles Cafe (Chapter 3) is real and serves an excellent fry-up.
> 
> Thankyou again, and goodnight.
> 
> \- pT


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